Literature summary
Simple overviews of interesting and relevant research, including discussion of different aspects of human capital and long-term growth, as well as insights on econometric and other analytical methods.
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The first universities were established in the medieval age, connected to the Catholic church and educating only a small handful. A millennium later, and universities have expanded in number, scope and scale: tens of thousands of institutions of higher education exist around the world, with hundreds of millions of students studying fields ranging from the…
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There is broad agreement that human capital — the skills and attribute which influence individuals’ productive capacity — matters for long-term development. But curiously, there is mixed evidence on the role of human capital as a driver of industrialisation. Part of the problem here may relate to how human capital is measured. At the macroeconomic…
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A favoured argument in defence of tariffs, quotas and other trade barriers is to shield emerging (or ‘infant’) industries from foreign competition during a period of establishment and early growth. By temporarily raising the cost of imports, governments can give an industry breathing space to build up a critical mass of capacity and talent, which…
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Alongside literacy, numeracy is a key pillar of education and progress. Basic arithmetic skills are in essence a requirement for modern-day life, while more sophisticated techniques are fundamental to any number of scientific and technological advances we nowadays take for granted. In a new working paper, Danna, Iori and Mina consider the contribution of mathematics…
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Today, secondary schooling is a natural pathway for generations of young people. It was not always so. Historically, education was an elite pursuit. And even as public education systems with compulsory primary schooling began to take root (for much of the developed world, in the nineteenth century), high school remained the domain of a relative…
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That people sometimes err when recalling their age is not uncommon. (I have even been guilty of it myself!) The problem is more acute in historical settings, and even in developing countries today: individuals with limited access to education are less able to calculate their age. An observed tendency is for innumerate people to round…
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A useful starting point for assessing the effect of a shock or intervention is a basis of comparison: those affected by a change versus those not affected. But what if everyone is potentially affected in some way? What if there is no obvious benchmark against which differences can be evaluated? One answer is simply to…
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Some jobs are disproportionately filled by male workers, while others are dominated by female workers. Goldin’s pollution theory of discrimination offers a novel framework for understanding differences in male and female labour force outcomes.
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Education — whether through formal instruction in schools, or through on-the-job training — is essential in the development of skills. And skills matter for workers’ productive capacity: that is, how we apply ourselves in our working lives. While there is a considerable body of research on the role of education in raising labour quality and…
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The first universities were founded in Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In Scandinavia, the oldest extant universities can be found in Uppsala and Copenhagen — both universities opened in the late fifteenth century. My own institution, Lund University, was established in 1666 — following an earlier medieval academy in Lund, which was shuttered…