No abstract

Attention to the quality of human capital in different countries naturally leads to concerns about how school policies relate to student performance. The data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) provide a way of comparing performance in different schooling systems.The results of analyses of educational production functions within a range of developed and developing countries show general problems with the efficiency of resource usage similar to those found previously in the United States. These effects do not appear to be dictated by variations related to income level of the country or level of resources in the schools. Neither do they appear to be determined by school policies that involve compensatory application of resources. The conventional view that school resources are relatively more important in poor countries also fails to be supported.The emphasis on human capital policy that has become a centerpiece of government programs around the world is now accepted as a natural and enlightened view of policy.Important contributions by Theodore Shultz, Gary Becker, and Jacob Mincer set the case for the importance of human capital for individual productivity and earnings, for the distribution of economic success, and ultimately for the growth of national economies. The implications of this work has been extended into the developing world by a strong and consistent focus of the World Bank -propelled in large part by a series of influential studies by George Psacharopoulos. This work builds on that, considering what countries can do to improve the human capital of their populations. The central focus is how systematic policy actions of governments affect student performance. Building upon the testing and surveys of the Third International Mathematics andScience Study (TIMSS), we consider specifically how families and schools contribute to within and between country variations in student performance. We then go beyond this to investigate whether school in the different countries work to narrow or widen performance differences. School quantity and qualityEmpirical work in human capital has concentrated on the private returns to the quantity school obtained by individuals. The standard Mincer formulation shows how investment can be translated into observed differences across individuals (Mincer (1970(Mincer ( , 1974). If investment declines linearly and if all of the costs of investment are forgone earnings, the simple relationship between log earnings and years of schooling yields a direct estimate of the rate of return on a year of schooling. This elegant characterization has the overwhelming virtue that it can be applied using commonly available data not only for the United States but many countries of the world. In

Two continuous time formulations of the dynamic traffic assignment problem are considered, one that corresponds to system optimization and the other to a version of user optimization on a single mode network using optimal control theory. Pontryagin's necessary conditions are analyzed and given economic interpretations that correspond to intuitive notions regarding dynamic system optimized and dynamic user optimized traffic flow patterns. Notably, we offer the first dynamic generalization of Beckmann's equivalent optimization problem for static user optimized traffic assignment in the form of an optimal control problem. The analysis further establishes that a constraint qualification and convexity requirements for the Hamiltonian, which together ensure that the necessary conditions are also sufficient, are satisfied under commonly encountered regularity conditions.

Attention to the quality of human capital in different countries naturally leads to concerns about how school policies relate to student performance. The data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) provide a way of comparing performance in different schooling systems.The results of analyses of educational production functions within a range of developed and developing countries show general problems with the efficiency of resource usage similar to those found previously in the United States. These effects do not appear to be dictated by variations related to income level of the country or level of resources in the schools. Neither do they appear to be determined by school policies that involve compensatory application of resources. The conventional view that school resources are relatively more important in poor countries also fails to be supported.The emphasis on human capital policy that has become a centerpiece of government programs around the world is now accepted as a natural and enlightened view of policy.Important contributions by Theodore Shultz, Gary Becker, and Jacob Mincer set the case for the importance of human capital for individual productivity and earnings, for the distribution of economic success, and ultimately for the growth of national economies. The implications of this work has been extended into the developing world by a strong and consistent focus of the World Bank -propelled in large part by a series of influential studies by George Psacharopoulos. This work builds on that, considering what countries can do to improve the human capital of their populations. The central focus is how systematic policy actions of governments affect student performance. Building upon the testing and surveys of the Third International Mathematics andScience Study (TIMSS), we consider specifically how families and schools contribute to within and between country variations in student performance. We then go beyond this to investigate whether school in the different countries work to narrow or widen performance differences. School quantity and qualityEmpirical work in human capital has concentrated on the private returns to the quantity school obtained by individuals. The standard Mincer formulation shows how investment can be translated into observed differences across individuals (Mincer (1970(Mincer ( , 1974). If investment declines linearly and if all of the costs of investment are forgone earnings, the simple relationship between log earnings and years of schooling yields a direct estimate of the rate of return on a year of schooling. This elegant characterization has the overwhelming virtue that it can be applied using commonly available data not only for the United States but many countries of the world. In

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.