In the public discourse, education is usually considered as the main vehicle for the promotion of social equality and social mobility. The paper surveys the existing literature and concludes that the relationship between education and inequality in Greece is strong. Inequities are evident at all...

This paper argues that skill formation is a life-cycle process and develops the implications of this insight for Scottish social policy. Families are major producers of skills, and a successful policy needs to promote effective families and to supplement failing ones. We present evidence that...

This paper presents economic models of child development that capture the essence of recent findings from the empirical literature on skill formation. The goal of this essay is to provide a theoretical framework for interpreting the evidence from a vast empirical literature, for guiding the next...

This paper reviews what has been learned over many decades of foreign aid to education. It discusses what works and what does not and in this discussion draws attention to the fact that even a simple assessment requires more than providing a uniform check-list of inputs. It shows the positive...

This paper examines a broad range of opportunities for addressing the pressing human development needs of low-income countries by using new oil, gas, and mineral discoveries. It assesses how much of an impact can be made on the funding gaps for health and education by new oil and gas revenues,...

The literature on vouchers often concludes that a voucher-based system cannot be the outcome of a majority vote. This paper shows that it is possible to propose selective vouchers (of exogenous value) such that the majority of voters are in favour of selective vouchers. As long as the...

New York’s School Tax Relief Program, STAR, provides state-funded property tax relief for homeowners. Like a matching grant, STAR changes the price of education, thereby altering the incentives of voters and school officials and leading to unintended consequences. Using data for New York...

The paper presents the GAMEO model. It is a dynamic microsimulation model which aims at analyse educational output. It develops a generational approach and put the stress on the ditribution of educational output differentiated by type an level of degree.

In South Africa, school quality within the public school system is heterogeneous and highly stratified along race, socio-economic status and geographic location. Because of the lingering effect of racial segregation, schools which historically served the white minority and accordingly received a...

This paper assesses the potential to raise public spending efficiency in the primary and secondary education sector. Resource availability per pupil has increased significantly over the past decade in a number of countries; often in attempting to exploit the link between educational attainment...