A new macroeconomic measure of human capital exploiting PISA and PIAAC: Linking education policies to productivity

Balázs Égert, Christine de la Maisonneuve and David Turner

No 1709, OECD Economics Department Working Papers from OECD Publishing

Abstract: This paper provides a new measure of human capital using PISA and PIAAC surveys, and mean years of schooling. The new measure is a cohort-weighted average of past PISA scores (representing the quality of education) of the working age population and the corresponding mean years of schooling (representing the quantity of education). In contrast to the existing literature, the relative weights of each component are not imposed or calibrated but directly estimated. The paper finds that the elasticity of the stock of human capital with respect to the quality of education is three to four times larger than for the quantity of education. The new measure has a strong link to productivity with the potential for productivity gains being much greater from improvements in the quality than quantity component of human capital. The magnitude of these potential gains in MFP is comparable to a similarly standardised improvement in product market regulation, but the effects materialise with much longer lags. The paper demonstrates through the example of pre-primary education, how to simulate the impact of a particular reform to education policy on human capital and productivity.

Keywords: education policies; human capital; OECD countries; PIAAC; PISA; productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 I20 I25 I26 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-04-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eff and nep-mac
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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https://doi.org/10.1787/a1046e2e-en (text/html)

Related works:
Journal Article: A new macroeconomic measure of human capital exploiting PISA and PIAAC: linking education policies to productivity (2024)
Working Paper: A New Macroeconomic Measure of Human Capital Exploiting PISA and PIAAC: Linking Education Policies to Productivity (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:1709-en

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