Handbook of the Economics of Education

Eric Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He is internationally recognized for his economic analysis of educational issues, and his research has had broad influence on education policy in both developed and developing countries. He received the Yidan Prize for Education Research in 2021. He is the author of numerous widely-cited studies on the effects of class size reduction, school accountability, teacher effectiveness, and other topics. He was the first to research teacher effectiveness by measuring students’ learning gains, which forms the conceptual basis for using value-added measures to evaluate teachers and schools, now a widely adopted practice. His recent book with Ludger Woessmann, The Knowledge Capital of Nations: Education and the Economics of Growth summarizes research establishing the close links between countries’ long-term rates of economic growth and the skill levels of their populations. He has authored or edited twenty-five books along with over 300 articles. He is a Distinguished Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and completed his Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. hanushek@stanford.edu; http://hanushek.stanford.edu/ Stephen J. Machin is a Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, has been President of the European Association of Labour Economists, is a Fellow of the Society of Labor Economists and was an independent member of the UK Low Pay Commission from 2007-14. He was Chair of the Economics and Econometrics sub-panel of the UK’s 2021 Research Excellence Framework. He has researched and published extensively in various areas of empirical economics and public policy, including labour market inequality, the economics of education, industrial relations, social mobility, and the economics of crime. s.j.machin@lse.ac.uk; https://personal.lse.ac.uk/machin/ Ludger Woessmann is the Director of the ifo Center for the Economics of Education and Professor of Economics at the University of Munich. He is also Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Being interested in the determinants of long-term prosperity of mankind, his main research focus is on the economics of education, especially the importance of education for economic prosperity and the effects of school systems on educational achievement and equality of opportunity. He is Fellow of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Academic Advisory Council of the German Federal Ministry of Economics, and the International Academy of Education. https://sites.google.com/view/woessmann-e

"2011 PROSE Award Honorable Mention for Economics""The increased importance of knowledge, skills, and information in the modern economy means that human capital and education will be even more important in the future than it has been during the past 50 years. ... The articles in these handbook volumes convey some of the excitement that continues in research on the economics of education." --Gary S. Becker, University of Chicago"This important volume follows soon after volume 3, so together they provide up-to-date expert evaluations of the latest research findings on the economics of education, including some significant topics that are little discussed by economists. There are chapters on how psychological behavior affects economic decisions; the relation between educational achievement on one hand and criminal activity, good health, and political participation on the other; and the relation between education and the process of economic development. Other chapters address more familiar issues, such as education and migration, the use of school vouchers, overall school financing, and performance pay for teachers. One chapter considers an intriguing issue--whether there has been, or can be, over education. Most readers will appreciate the chapter on the determinants of college achievement. Each of the nine long essays comes with an unusually extensive bibliography. Of strong value for researchers and professional educators. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through professional collections." --CHOICE, August 2012, Vol. 49, No. 11, page 153

• Chapter 1: Personality Psychology and EconomicsChapter 2: Non-Production Benefits of Education: Crime, Health, and Good CitizenshipChapter 3: Overeducation and Mismatch in the Labor MarketChapter 4: Migration and EducationChapter 5: Inequality, Human Capital Formation and the Process of DevelopmentChapter 6: The Design of Performance Pay in EducationChapter 7: Educational Vouchers in International ContextsChapter 8: Dropouts and Diplomas: The Divergence in Collegiate OutcomesChapter 9: The Political Economy of Education Funding