Human capital theory recognizes that time preferences - patience - are important for skill investments. We show how Facebook interests can be used to construct subnational measures of patience. Differences in patience are closely related to regional student achievement in Italy and the United...

Decisions to invest in human capital depend on people's time preferences. We show that differences in patience are closely related to substantial subnational differences in educational achievement, leading to new perspectives on longstanding within-country disparities. We use social-media data -...

We provide evidence that the robust association between cognitive skills and economic growth reflects a causal effect of cognitive skills and supports the economic benefits of effective school policy. We develop a new common metric that allows tracking student achievement across countries, over...