IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/edecon/v15y2007i1p31-53.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Diminishing Marginal Returns and the Production of Education: An International Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Douglas Harris

Abstract

Diminishing marginal returns (DMR) to school inputs could explain a wide variety of findings in the research literature. One important example is the influential finding by Heyneman and Loxley that school inputs are the 'predominant influence' on achievement in developing nations, where input levels are low, even though the same school inputs have relatively little influence in developed nations, where input levels are higher. However, few studies of education production, including those related to the Heyneman-Loxley hypothesis, use functional forms that allow for DMR, and common tests for DMR appear to be invalid. Various tests are implemented using data from 32 countries. As is commonly found in the literature, the marginal effects of school inputs are frequently negative, precluding DMR. In those cases with positive marginal effects, there is more evidence for DMR than for increasing returns, but constant returns rarely can be rejected. DMR therefore does not appear to explain the differences in results between developing and developed nations.

Suggested Citation

  • Douglas Harris, 2007. "Diminishing Marginal Returns and the Production of Education: An International Analysis," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(1), pages 31-53.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:edecon:v:15:y:2007:i:1:p:31-53
    DOI: 10.1080/09645290601133894
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09645290601133894
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09645290601133894?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sass, Tim R. & Semykina, Anastasia & Harris, Douglas N., 2014. "Value-added models and the measurement of teacher productivity," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 9-23.
    2. Bouhlila, Donia Smaali, 2015. "The Heyneman–Loxley effect revisited in the Middle East and North Africa: Analysis using TIMSS 2007 database," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 85-95.
    3. Sam Jones, 2020. "Testing the Technology of Human Capital Production: A General‐to‐Restricted Framework," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 82(6), pages 1429-1455, December.
    4. Cong Li & Minglai Li, 2020. "The Policy Information Gap and Resettlers’ Well-Being: Evidence from the Anti-Poverty Relocation and Resettlement Program in China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(8), pages 1-20, April.
    5. Yang, Minseok & Lee, Ho Jun, 2022. "Do school resources reduce socioeconomic achievement gap? Evidence from PISA 2015," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    6. Dangxing Chen & Luyao Zhang, 2023. "Monotonicity for AI ethics and society: An empirical study of the monotonic neural additive model in criminology, education, health care, and finance," Papers 2301.07060, arXiv.org.
    7. Donia Smaali Bouhlila, 2013. "Students’ Achievement in the MENA Countries: The Heyneman-Loxley Effect Revisited Using TIMSS 2007 Data," Working Papers 779, Economic Research Forum, revised Oct 2013.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:edecon:v:15:y:2007:i:1:p:31-53. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CEDE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.