Here are 100 books that Education and Economic Growth fans have personally recommended if you like
Education and Economic Growth.
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I've always been interested in trying to make the world a better place, increasing the well-being of families and nations, and not just in making private profit for myself or for some employer. In working as a consultant on education and development in 22 different countries, many of them poor and developing such as Nepal, Malawi, and Indonesia, I've seen a lot of poverty and inequality, and have also come to see how education, including its effects on fertility rates, health, longevity, the survival of democratic institutions and so forth and especially its financing is at the heart of making lives better, especially for children who are the future of each family and each nation.
Theodore Schultz, a personal friend, was President of the American Economics Association, and Head of the Economics Department at the University of Chicago.
He is generally regarded as the father of Human Capital theory and analysis, is the one who hired Gary Becker from Columbia University, and his Presidential Address to the American Economics Association in 1960 is widely cited as the beginning of the human capital revolution in economics.
It transformed the fields of economic growth where modern endogenous growth models are currently the mainstream, the fields of labor economics, home economics, the economics of education, and is in the process of revolutionizing the field of economic development (with ‘endogenous development’).
This highly readable and interesting book will give the reader a basic understanding of human capital analysis. Its roots are in Becker’s Economic Journal article on “the economics of the allocation of human time”.
I've always been interested in trying to make the world a better place, increasing the well-being of families and nations, and not just in making private profit for myself or for some employer. In working as a consultant on education and development in 22 different countries, many of them poor and developing such as Nepal, Malawi, and Indonesia, I've seen a lot of poverty and inequality, and have also come to see how education, including its effects on fertility rates, health, longevity, the survival of democratic institutions and so forth and especially its financing is at the heart of making lives better, especially for children who are the future of each family and each nation.
I strongly recommend this book because it is clearly written, explains the methods of estimation, and provides an excellent overview of the extensive worldwide research on the returns to education based on earnings.
It certainly influenced me. It had a massive impact on World Bank lending policies in support of economic development in developing countries. It replaced the kinds of Bank physical capital investment policies such as those supporting dam construction, projects that included educating only for a few people on how to operate dams, with education sector-wide loans that support primary and junior secondary education of the labor force.
Some of these dams later washed out, and forests were destroyed in support of development. The book shows how the returns to investment in primary and secondary education are higher in developing countries where the labor force is often nearly illiterate than they are to investing in other higher levels…
Hardback. Jacket a little sunned, worn, with several small nicks along top edge. Boards a little worn at edges only. Previous owner's name label on front endpaper; contents otherwise clean and sound throughout. TPW
I've always been interested in trying to make the world a better place, increasing the well-being of families and nations, and not just in making private profit for myself or for some employer. In working as a consultant on education and development in 22 different countries, many of them poor and developing such as Nepal, Malawi, and Indonesia, I've seen a lot of poverty and inequality, and have also come to see how education, including its effects on fertility rates, health, longevity, the survival of democratic institutions and so forth and especially its financing is at the heart of making lives better, especially for children who are the future of each family and each nation.
This book is a classic. Gary Becker received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1992 for his work on Human Capital, (as had TW Schultz).
This book was near the beginning of Gary Becker’s very productive life and launched a well-known wave of research and innovation that has by now had major impacts on many branches of economics such labor economics, international trade, economic growth, home economics, and now economic development.
He received the Medal of Freedom from George W. Bush at the White House in 2007 where President Bush said “Professor Becker has shown that economic principles do not just exist in theory.” Gary Becker died in 2014. He was 83.
This is a ‘must read’ for any person seriously interested in Human Capital, Labor Economics, the Economics of Education, or other fields that have been or are being revolutionized by human capital theory and empirical research. For others…
"Human Capital" is Becker's study of how investment in an individual's education and training is similar to business investments in equipment. Becker looks at the effects of investment in education on earnings and employment, and shows how his theory measures the incentive for such investment, as well as the costs and returns from college and high school education. Another part of the study explores the relation between age and earnings. This edition includes four new chapters, covering recent ideas about human capital, fertility and economic growth, the division of labour, economic considerations within the family, and inequality in earnings.
Inequality and fairness are basic issues in human conflict and cooperation that have long fascinated me. Growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, I was confronted with the extreme racial segregation of schools and neighborhoods. My Catholic upbringing taught me to cherish the cardinal virtues of justice, wisdom, courage, and temperance, and my education in political economy taught me that markets can fairly and efficiently allocate resources, when legal power is evenly shared. My formal education culminated in a Ph.D. in Public Affairs from Princeton University, which led me to my current roles: Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Principal Economist at Gallup. I care deeply about the social conditions that create cooperation and conflict.
To understand why some workers are paid more than others, you have to understand how skills are valued and rewarded in the labor market, and how that has changed, as the economy has evolved.
Focused on the United States, Katz and Goldin provide a sweeping overview of how education leads to skills and income, drawing on the most well-established theories in economics. It misses some important causes of inequality, but is essential for understanding the one of the deepest economic forces governing wages: the supply and demand of human capital.
This book provides a careful historical analysis of the co-evolution of educational attainment and the wage structure in the United States through the twentieth century. The authors propose that the twentieth century was not only the American Century but also the Human Capital Century. That is, the American educational system is what made America the richest nation in the world. Its educational system had always been less elite than that of most European nations. By 1900 the U.S. had begun to educate its masses at the secondary level, not just in the primary schools that had remarkable success in the…
As Nobel prize-winning economist Robert Lucas put it, "Once you start thinking about economic growth, it's hard to think about anything else." That's why I am eager to share the best books on economic development with you! I am a Senior Economist at the World Bank, the world's premier development institution. Over the years, I have developed a deep interest in what makes countries prosper, have published extensively on the topic in academic journals, and earned a PhD in Economics along the way. As a development practitioner, I have been supporting sustainable growth across the globe, with working experience in the Caribbean, Africa, and the Pacific.
In a captivating journey from the dawn of human existence to the present, Oded Galor offers a fascinating tale of why some nations have developed while others haven't.
The book explains how technology, family size, and adaptation led to a profound change in human history, with the Industrial Revolution as the turning point. The fundamental forces driving the explosion of per capita prosperity (in some nations) can be traced back to sound political institutions, conducive cultural traits, and an 'optimal' ethnic diversity that followed from the dispersal of modern humans out of Africa some 70,000 years ago.
I was struck by how the author brought together a wide variety of research on growth and development in a coherent framework.
This breakthrough scientific masterwork - and INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - reveals the underlying forces that have shaped human history and will secure our future...
'Masterful. Galor answers the ultimate mystery' Lewis Dartnell
The stunning advances that have transformed human experience in recent centuries are no accident of history - they are the result of universal and timeless forces, operating since the dawn of our species. Drawing on a lifetime's scientific investigation, Oded Galor's ground-breaking new vision overturns a host of long-held assumptions to reveal the deeper causes that have shaped the journey of humanity:
Education rather than industrialisation Family size and…
Roger E. Backhouse has been a Professor of Economics and the University of Birmingham (in the UK) for many years, specializing in the history of economic ideas, and has written several books on contemporary economics and where the ideas came from. Knowing that many people lose interest when economics gets technical, he has picked biographies of modern economists who have led interesting lives as well as contributing to the development of their discipline, defining “modern” economists as ones who were active during his own lifetime, a criterion that excludes John Maynard Keynes, on whom several outstanding biographies have been written.
I have picked this book because it tells a story that should interest anyone even if they have no interest in technical economics. Albert Hirschman was born into a Jewish family in Berlin and in his teens became politically committed as a socialist, at a time when the rise of the Nazi party made this a dangerous activity. The book tells the story of his exploits in Germany and occupied Europe before he ended up in the United States, where he made his career as a specialist on economic development, spending a significant part of his life advising the government of Colombia.
Hopefully, the book gives an account of Hirschman’s economic ideas in a way that will make sense even to readers who don’t know any economics, but even without that, it is a sufficiently gripping story of the life of an exile from inter-war Germany who ended up as…
Worldly Philosopher chronicles the times and writings of Albert O. Hirschman, one of the twentieth century's most original and provocative thinkers. In this gripping biography, Jeremy Adelman tells the story of a man shaped by modern horrors and hopes, a worldly intellectual who fought for and wrote in defense of the values of tolerance and change. This is the first major account of Hirschman's remarkable life, and a tale of the twentieth century as seen through the story of an astute and passionate observer. Adelman's riveting narrative traces how Hirschman's personal experiences shaped his unique intellectual perspective, and how his…
I was initially drawn to economics as a way to understand and address global problems of poverty and hunger, like those I saw in Africa with the Peace Corps and later as a researcher. As my interests broadened toward environmental and other social problems, again I found that economics provides valuable insights about their causes and possible solutions. Economics is unfortunately often misunderstood and defined too narrowly: but as a social science, it encompasses a broad framework to comprehend individuals, families, cities, nations. It encompasses philosophical thought, normative questions, and intangibles like humans’ desire for respect. After decades as an economics professor I still find its insights fascinating and powerful.
The aims of economic development are often said to be higher incomes, industrialization, efficient investment, and poverty alleviation.
Amartya Sen argues for a broader goal: increasing the capability of all human beings to achieve those things that they most value.
Such an agenda implies more ambitious goals for empowering people, especially in poor countries, to begin a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy: education, health care, longevity, and the ability to influence political decisions.
Sen, a Nobel laureate in economics, draws on a lifetime of thought about human predicaments, famines, and poverty, how to define one’s capabilities, and the meaning of one’s ‘standard of living.’
Rather than offering specific recipes, this book provides a provocative framework for thought.
In Development as Freedom Amartya Sen quotes the eighteenth century poet William Cowper on freedom:
Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
That slaves howe'er contented, never know.
Sen explains how in a world of unprecedented increase in overall opulence, millions of people living in rich and poor countries are still unfree. Even if they are not technically slaves, they are denied elementary freedom and remain imprisoned in one way or another by economic poverty, social deprivation, political tyranny or cultural authoritarianism. The main purpose of development is to spread freedom and its 'thousand charms' to the unfree citizens.
I have always been curious about why societies develop, which is why I was drawn to the social sciences as a student. I first encountered attempts to explain development in economics, but found that mainstream models were too neat and abstract to account for my everyday observations. Why are there no entrepreneurs in the models, and why do most economists assume that property rights are unambiguous? I eventually discovered that non-mainstream economic theories and some of the other social sciences are more concerned with reality. Eventually I developed an eclectic framework with a focus on entrepreneurship, institutions, and spatial agglomerations as factors that shape socio-economic development.
This is the first book I read about the role of entrepreneurs in the economy. I have mixed feelings about it.
It’s filled with insights but it is also deeply flawed. Entrepreneurs drive economic development and engage in “creative destruction.” The market is about change rather than equilibrium. These are both great insights.
But history has refuted Schumpeter’s Nietzschean view that entrepreneurship is confined to “captains of industry” with unusual personality traits, and his attempts to explain business cycles is unpersuasive.
Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) is one of the most fascinating and influential economists of the twentieth century, renowned for his brilliant and unorthodox insights into the nature of capitalism. His students include leading economists such as Paul Samuelson, Robert Solow and the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan.
The Theory of Economic Development is one of Schumpeter's most important books and the one that made him famous. He poses a fundamental question: why does economic development proceed cyclically rather than evenly? Turning prevailing economic theory, which approached economics as equilibrium, on its head, Schumpeter argues it is because economics…
I am an economics professor and have been interested in applying economic methods to study political decision-making since my days as a graduate student. Too often, we think about government in terms of what we would like government to do rather than what government actually is capable of doing. In many cases, political decision-makers would be unable to obtain sufficient information to actually carry out the policies we think would be ideal, and even if they have the information, often they don’t have the incentive to do so. An economic approach to politics offers a more realistic way to understand political decision-making.
Olson focuses on the impact of interest groups on public policy. He emphasizes the way that economic interests lobby governments to produce policies favorable to them, but at the expense of the general public. Interests lobby for subsidies, tax breaks, trade barriers to protect them from foreign competition, regulatory barriers to inhibit domestic competitors, and more. Over time, the connection between interest groups and policymakers strengthens, so that increasingly, profits are the result of political connections rather than producing value for consumers. The growth of interest group influence over time leads to the decline of nations.
"A convincing book that could make a big difference in the way we think about modern economic problems."-Peter Passell, New York Times Book Review
"Clearly, this is no ordinary theory. Equally clearly, it sprang from the mind of no ordinary economist."-James Lardner, Washington Post
The years since World War II have seen rapid shifts in the relative positions of different countries and regions. Leading political economist Mancur Olson offers a new and compelling theory to explain these shifts in fortune and then tests his theory against evidence from many periods of history and many parts of the world.
I have been teaching and writing about economics and the environment for over thirty-five years, and have been inspired by my students to work towards a new ecological economics that can underpin a sustainable planetary future. Many of the crises that I and colleagues have predicted – climate disasters, soil degradation, water shortages, biodiversity loss – are now upon us, but the situation is not hopeless. I am working for a rapid transformation away from fossil-fuel and resource-intensive forms of economic growth, and hope that the expanding field of ecological economics can help to usher in this badly needed change.
This book provides an essential introduction to the expanding field of ecological economics.
Authored by some of the leading figures in the field, it covers the basic evidence of global limits to economic activity such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation. The historical basis for ecological economic theory is explained in non-technical terms.
The book covers issues of sustainable scale, natural capital, and ecosystem services – simple concepts that nonetheless revolutionize economic thinking. It concludes with an analysis of policies needed to achieve sustainability.
From Empty-World Economics to Full-World Economics
Ecological economics explores new ways of thinking about how we manage our lives and our planet to achieve a sustainable, equitable, and prosperous future. Ecological economics extends and integrates the study and management of both "nature's household" and "humankind's household"-An Introduction to Ecological Economics, Second Edition, the first update and expansion of this classic text in 15 years, describes new approaches to achieving a sustainable and desirable human presence on Earth. Written by the top experts in the field, it addresses the necessity for an innovative approach to integrated environmental, social, and economic analysis…
