NBER Working Papers by Eliot A. Jamison

Previous work shows that higher levels of education quality (as measured by international student achievement tests) increases growth rates of national income. This paper begins by confirming those findings in an analysis involving more countries over more time with additional controls. We then use the panel structure of our data to assess whether the mechanism by which education quality appears to improve per capita income levels is through shifting the level of the production function (probably not), through increasing the impact of an additional year of education (probably not), or through increasing a country's rate of technological progress (very likely). Mortality rates complement income levels as indicators of national well-being and we extend our panel models to show that improv...