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The contribution of schooling in development accounting: results from a nonparametric upper bound

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  • Caselli, Francesco
  • Ciccone, Antonio

Abstract

How much would output increase if underdeveloped economies were to increase their levels of schooling? We contribute to the development accounting literature by describing a nonparametric upper bound on the increase in output that can be generated by more schooling. The advantage of our approach is that the upper bound is valid for any number of schooling levels with arbitrary patterns of substitution/complementarity. Another advantage is that the upper bound is robust to certain forms of endogenous technology response to changes in schooling. We also quantify the upper bound for all economies with the necessary data, compare our results with the standard development accounting approach, and provide an update on the results using the standard approach for a large sample of countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Caselli, Francesco & Ciccone, Antonio, 2013. "The contribution of schooling in development accounting: results from a nonparametric upper bound," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 46783, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:46783
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    development accounting; imperfect substitution; schooling;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E00 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - General
    • E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts
    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development
    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • O3 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights
    • O30 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - General
    • O4 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity

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