Ludger Woessmann – författare

A rigorous, pathbreaking analysis demonstrating that a country''s prosperity is directly related in the long run to the skills of its population.

In this book Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann make a simple, central claim, developed with rigorous theoretical and empirical support: knowledge is the key to a country''s development. Of course, every country acknowledges the importance of developing human capital, but Hanushek and Woessmann argue that message has become distorted, with politicians and researchers concentrating not on valued skills but on proxies for them. The common focus is on school attainment, although time in school provides a very misleading picture of how skills enter into development. Hanushek and Woessmann contend that the cognitive skills of the population—which they term the “knowledge capital” of a nation—are essential to long-run prosperity.

Hanushek and Woessmann subject their hypotheses about the relationship between cognitive skills (as consistently measured by international student assessments) and economic growth to a series of tests, including alternate specifications, different subsets of countries, and econometric analysis of causal interpretations. They find that their main results are remarkably robust, and equally applicable to developing and developed countries. They demonstrate, for example, that the “Latin American growth puzzle” and the “East Asian miracle” can be explained by these regions'' knowledge capital. Turning to the policy implications of their argument, they call for an education system that develops effective accountability, promotes choice and competition, and provides direct rewards for good performance.

What is the value of an education? Volume 4 of the Handbooks in the Economics of Education combines recent data with new methodologies to examine this and related questions from diverse perspectives. School choice and school competition, educator incentives, the college premium, and other considerations help make sense of the investments and returns associated with education. Volume editors Eric A. Hanushek (Stanford), Stephen Machin (University College London) and Ludger Woessmann (Ifo Institute for Economic Research, Munich) draw clear lines between newly emerging research on the economics of education and prior work. In conjunction with Volume 3, they measure our current understanding of educational acquisition and its economic and social effects.

The volume of research into the economics of education has grown rapidly in recent years. In this comprehensive new Handbook, editors Eric Hanushek, Stephen Machin, and Ludger Woessmann assemble original contributions from leading researchers, addressing contemporary advances in the field. Each chapter illuminates major methodological and theoretical developments and directs the reader to productive new lines of research. As a result, these concise overviews of the existing literature offer an essential 'jumpstart' for both students and researchers alike.