This paper evaluates the relative contribution of factor accumulation and technology in explaining output per worker differences across Italian regions in the period 2000-2004. The contributions of physical and human capital are separately estimated through the variance decomposition of output...

Using recently available large-sample micro data from 36 countries, we document that experience-earnings profiles are flatter in poor countries than in rich countries. Motivated by this fact, we conduct a development accounting exercise that allows the returns to experience to vary across...

Practitioners of development accounting assume that the private return on schooling equals its social marginal product. I show that this assumption is inconsistent with the mathematical structure of a multiplicative production function, which specifies that the private return is only a fraction...

Empirical studies assume that the macro Mincer return on schooling is constant across countries. Using a large sample of countries this paper shows that countries with a better quality of education have on average relatively higher macro Mincer coefficients. As rich countries have on average...

Empirical studies assume that the macro Mincer return on schooling is con- stant across countries. Using a large sample of countries this paper shows that countries with a better quality of education have on average relatively higher macro Mincer coeficients. As rich countries have on average...

We carry out a classical development accounting exercise using data from the “Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies” (PIAAC). PIAAC data, available for 30 upper-middle and high-income countries and nationally representative for the working-age population, allow us...

Are labor markets in higher-income countries more meritocratic, in the sense that worker-job matching is based on skills rather than idiosyncratic attributes unrelated to productivity? If so, why? And what are the aggregate consequences? Using internationally comparable data on worker skills and...

This article presents revised estimates of the external rates of return on investment in schooling provided in “Schooling and National Income: How Large Are the Externalities?” The analysis is based on data for the same set of countries, but it incorporates methodological improvements that...

This paper uses a new data set for cumulative national investment in formal schooling and a new instrument for schooling to estimate the national return on investment in 61 countries. These estimates are combined with data on the private rate of return on investment in schooling to estimate the...

Do high levels of human capital foster economic growth by facilitating technology adoption? If so, countries with more human capital should have adopted more rapidly the skilled-labor augmenting technologies becoming available since the 1970’s. High human capital levels should therefore have...