This dissertation consists of three chapters that contribute to the fields of macroeconomics, economic development, and entrepreneurship. In the first chapter, "Entrepreneurship Selection and Performance in the U.S. and Across Countries: The Role of Human Capital," I seek to establish a set of stylized facts related to entrepreneurship…

In education, there is ample evidence that some schools far outperform others at raising student achievement even when accounting for differences in the students they serve and the resources at their disposal. Differences in the human capital stock of teachers across schools cannot fully account for the differential productivity across schools. In…

One of the central problems in managing technological change and maintaining a competitive advantage in business is improving the skills of the workforce through investment in human capital and a variety of training practices. This paper explores the evidence on the impact of training investment on productivity in 14 Canadian industries from 1999…

This paper examines the impact of education on economic growth in Greece over the period 1960-2000 by applying the model introduced by Mankiw, Romer, and Weil. The findings of the empirical analysis reveal that education had a positive and statistically significant effect on economic growth in Greece over the period 1960-2000. The econometric…

"Investing in Kids: Early Childhood Programs and Local Economic Development," a 2011 book by Timothy Bartik, Senior Economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, provides a new evidence-based approach for effective economic development. This approach is designed to support business growth and job creation by improving…

Today's school business officials are more aware than ever of the importance of making every dollar count. As they scour their budgets for possible savings, they may be tempted to reduce investment in school infrastructure, perhaps by deferring maintenance, renovations, and replacement of outdated facilities. However, school business officials…

The purpose of this study was to estimate the effects of investment in graduate and professional education on the subsequent growth in state workforce productivity. The independent variables of this study were investment in master's degree education, investment in doctoral degree education, investment in professional degree education, initial…

Formal education not only educates individuals, it reconstitutes the very foundations of society through a pervasive culture of education with a legitimate capacity to reconstruct work and its central components such as ideas about human productive abilities, new organisations and management, widespread professionalism and expertise, and the…

"Research Messages 2014" is a collection of summaries of research published by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) in 2014 in the context of changing economic, industrial, social and education conditions, organised under the following broad categories: (1) Productivity: to sustain and build Australia's human…

This is a unique and groundbreaking collection of questions and answers coming from higher education institutions on diverse fields and across a wide spectrum of countries and cultures. It creates routes for further innovation, collaboration amidst the Sciences (both Natural and Social), the Humanities, and the private and public sectors of…

This paper estimates models of the evolution of cognitive and noncognitive skills and explores the role of family environments in shaping these skills at different stages of the life cycle of the child. Central to this analysis is identification of the technology of skill formation. We estimate a dynamic factor model to solve the problem of…

Background/Context: In the field of educational research, conventional wisdom holds that primary-level schooling, specifically literacy acquisition, promotes economic mobility for individuals and economic development for the nation. This belief is rooted in human capital theory, the causal argument claiming that state investment in schooling or…

A review of the state of the art of educational economics considers recent seemingly conflicting or disparate forms of economic analysis such as human capital theory, the study of education and economic growth, distribution of income, internal system efficiency, and education's effects on crime, savings, and consumption. (MSE)

Examines the concept of human capital, including how it is linked to strategic analysis and how it relates to four alternative models for return-on-investment (ROI). Discusses how to choose the best model for ROI justification of training or other human performance technology (HPT) interventions. (AEF)

Many leaders of public research universities worry about falling behind private research universities at a time when private university finances have improved dramatically and state support for higher education has declined. In this paper, I provide grounds for a more optimistic view of the competitive position of public research universities. I…