I use a dynamic Solow growth model, augmented with human capital, labor-hours, and oil prices, to show that Japan’s growth in GDP/adult over 1969-2007 can be explained as a process of convergence to a world steady-state rate of 1%/year. I find that each additional year of average schooling...

Background This paper was prepared to contribute to a special issue on the value of education. Purpose The paper examines the role of education in economic development from both a theoretical and a historic perspective, addresses why education has been the limiting factor determining development...

Students´ test scores at ages 9 to 15 are a measure of their skills as workers five to 55 years later. Using historic data on test scores and school attendance, I calculate the share of workers in 2005 that could have scored above 400 and above 600 in 45 countries. I find that the share above...

Using a new data set for human capital/adult, I show that changes in human capital cause economic growth in 56 countries over the 1985 to 2005 period. I show that these results are superior to results using average schooling attainment.

This paper presents evidence that students´ test scores at ages 9 to 15 are not a good proxy for a nation´s stock of human capital. Across countries test scores rise with increases in human capital up to $40,000/adult (2000$), but then decline as human capital increases up to $125,000/adult....

The marginal product of human capital in Mankiw, Romer, and Weil´s [1992] augmented Solow model measures the direct and two external effects of human capital created from schooling on national income. If this model is valid, its estimates of the share of this marginal product accruing to...

The economics literature identifies three effects of schooling on national income; the direct effect on the earnings of the workers who receive the schooling and the external effects on workers´ earnings and on physical capital due to schooling´s spillover effect on the productivity of these...

Construction prices in developing countries in ICP 2005 are lower relative to prices in developed countries than in earlier versions of the ICP. Our estimates of the Colombia/U.S. ratio of prices for office buildings demonstrate that the ICP 2005 price ratio for these countries is substantially...

Penn World Table (PWT) 7.0 is the newest PWT data set, based in part on benchmarked prices collected in 2005. In theory the data in PWT 7.0 should be more accurate than the data in PWT 6.3 since 1996 and similar in earlier years. I show that PWT 7.0 GDP/capita and price data for 1970 to 1996...

Like students in most developing countries, Colombian students in 4th grade performed poorly in the TIMSS 2007 test of mathematics skills, achieving an average score of 355 relative to an international mean of 500. After controlling for other factors and misreporting error, I find that large...