Economics of Education

The "economics of education" involves analysis of the economic and social determinants and consequences of education. Because each person´s education is an investment in human capital which allows the individual to contribute to society in a productive way, education becomes a crucial determinant of an economy´s ability to achieve high growth with high wages, low unemployment and strong social cohesion. This course will address three essential topics from the wide-ranging field of the economics of education. The first is demand-side oriented and includes: (i) the measurement of the returns to education in the labor market (human capital theory; the central idea of education as human capital investment); and (ii) a characterization of the education production function, which relates the various inputs affecting a student´s learning (schools, families, peers, neighborhoods, etc.) to measure outputs including labor market success, graduation rates and standardized test scores. The second important topic involves political economy and the supply side: the financing and provision of education. The third part of the course is devoted to the links between education and economic development, including cross-country differences in schooling, returns to schooling and per-capita income. Prerequisites: Econ 4011, Econ 4021, and Econ 413.
Course Attributes: EN S; AS SSC; FA SSC; AR SSC

Economics of Education

ECONOMICS 483

Section 01