Intro -- Contents -- Introduction -- I Why the West? -- 1 Genesis -- 2 The Birth of the Modern World -- 3 Malthus' Law -- 4 Unbound Prometheus -- 5 Perpetual Growth -- II Prosperity and Depression -- 6 The Economic Consequences of the War -- 7 The Great Crisis and Its Lessons -- 8 The Golden Age...

This essay proposes a set of non-econometric tests using data on wage structure, school resource costs, public expenditures, taxes, and rates of return to explain anomalies in which richer political units deliver less education than poorer ones. Both the anomalies of education history, and its...

Both the anomalies of education history, and its less surprising contrasts, fit broad patterns that can be revealed and partially explained using low-tech methods. Over most of human history, contrasts in the output of education were driven mainly by contrasts in the supply of tax support for...