The role of improved schooling, a central part of most development strategies, has become controversial because expansion of school attainment has not guaranteed improved economic conditions. This paper reviews the role of education in promoting economic well-being, focusing on the role of...

We estimate educational production functions for seven Eastern European transition countries, using student-level TIMSS data for lower secondary education. The results show substantial effects of student background on educational performance and a much lower impact of resources and the...

We estimate educational production functions for seven Eastern European transition countries, using student-level TIMSS data for lower secondary education. The results show substantial effects of student background on educational performance and a much lower impact of resources and the...

German separation in 1949 into a communist East and a capitalist West and their reunification in 1990 are commonly described as a natural experiment to study the enduring effects of communism. We show in three steps that the populations in East and West Germany were far from being randomly...