Little is known about which of the skills that make up workers'human capital contribute to higher earnings. Past empirical evidence suggest that most of the return to schooling is generated by effects or correlates unrelated to the skills measured by the available tests. This paper uses the...

Typically estimates of the benefits of education investments show average private rates of return for the average individual. The average may not be useful for policy. An examination of the distribution of the returns across individuals is needed. The few studies that have examined these...

Preliminary evidence suggests that the rates of return to education in Venezuela have been declining since the 1970s. The authors rigorously estimate the returns to education in Venezuela for the period 1992-2002, and link them to earlier available estimates from the 1980s. They use consistent...

Since the development of human capital theory, countless estimates of the economic benefits of investing in education for the individual have been published. While it is a universal fact that in all countries of the world the more education one has the higher his or her earnings, it is...

This report analyzes the equity effects of public subsidization of private schools in Cote d'Ivoire, updates previous analyses, and attempts to assess how efficiently public spending is targeted. The subsidy per student in private (and public) schools increases at higher quintiles. Students from...

The authors evaluate whether increasing school resources and decentralizing management decisions at the school level improves learning in a developing country. Mexico's Quality Schools Program (PEC), following many other countries and U.S. states, offers US$15,000 grants for public schools to...

The authors use propensity score matching to evaluate the effectiveness of CONAFE, a compensatory education program in Mexico, in improving student test scores and lowering repetition and failure rates. They find that CONAFE is most effective in improving primary school math learning and...

This paper attempts to explore certain aspects underlying the substantial improvement in 8th grade student performance in Ghana on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study from2003 to 2007. The improvement was largely heterogeneous; in mathematics, performance improved more for...

The case studies in this book provide useful information on the characteristics of students and the performance of various types of schools that benefit from public-private partnerships. While these case studies are empirically grounded, their results are not necessarily of universal...

This volume is a systematic stock-taking of the evidence on school accountability reforms in developing countries. It provides a measured and insightful review and assessment of the results of a variety of approaches that developing countries are experimenting with in their quest for better...