We discuss existing shortfalls and inequalities in the accumulation of human capital-knowledge, skills, and health. We analyze their immediate and systemic causes, and assess the scope for public intervention. The broad policy goals should be to improve: the quality, and not just the quantity,...

We investigate whether increasing the education quality causes increases in economic growth allowing poorer countries to catch up. To this end, we extend Nelson-Phelps's classic paper by introducing differences in education quality (proxied by students' performance on the Program for...

How far is the world away from ensuring that every child obtains the basic skills needed to be internationally competitive? And what would accomplishing this mean for world development? Based on the micro data of international and regional achievement tests, we map achievement onto a common...

Empirical research has shown that cultural values matter for economic growth and has specifically identified the achievement motivation as an aspect of culture that engenders economic growth. If specific cultural values engender economic growth, how then can societies promote them? This paper...