Tables of national competitiveness give an easily comparable ranking of the winners and losers of global economic competition. But they don't explain why the “poor” countries are four times less productive than the “rich” ones or why some rich countries are twice as productive as others....

This book challenges the assumption that the major benefits of investment in rural education accrue to traditional agricultural activities, such as staples production. Indeed, rural economies are much more complex than such an assumption would allow and the benefits from education are,...