We provide a measure of equality of educational opportunity in 54 countries, estimated as the effect of family background on student performance in two international TIMSS tests. Using cross-country variation in education policies and its interaction with family background at the student level, we then estimate how equality is related to organizational features of the education system. We find that equality of opportunity is positively related to late tracking into different school types and to longer pre-school education. Pre-school enrollment has an inverted U-shaped relationship with equality. Equality is negatively related to private school financing, but positively to private provision. Copyright 2008 The Authors.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit company supported by Deutsche Post World Net. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its research networks, research support, and visitors and doctoral programs. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. We use the PISA student-level achievement database to estimate international education production functions. Student characteristics, family backgrounds, home inputs, resources, teachers and institutions are all significantly related to math, science and reading achievement. Our models account for more than 85% of the between-country performance variation, with roughly 25% accruing to institutional variation. Student performance is higher with external exams and budget formulation, but also with school autonomy in textbook choice, hiring teachers and within-school budget allocations. School autonomy is more beneficial in systems with external exit exams. Students perform better in privately operated schools, but private funding is not decisive.JEL Classification: I28, J24, H52, L33

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may Schooling Resources, Educational Institutions, and Student Performance:The International Evidence Abstract:The paper suggests that international differences in educational institutions explain the large international differences in student performance in cognitive achievement tests. A microeconometric student-level estimation based on data for more than 260,000 students from 39 countries reveals that positive effects on student performance stem from centralized examinations and control mechanisms, school autonomy in personnel and process decisions, competition from private educational institutions, scrutiny of achievement, and teacher influence on teaching methods. A large influence of teacher unions on curriculum scope has negative effects on student performance. The findings imply that international differences in student performance are not caused by differences in schooling resources but are mainly due to differences in educational institutions.Keywords: education production function, institutions, incentives Introduction and SummaryThe formation of human capital is essential for the economic success both of individuals and of society at large in a modern economy. The human capital stock comprises cognitive and non-cognitive skills and is mainly produced in families, schools, universities, and firms. This study focuses on students'cognitive skills in mathematics and science, which are mainly formed in schools. Since "[e]arly learning begets later learning" (Heckman 1999, p. 2), basic knowledge formed early in school has a substantial impact on potential future prosperity of individuals and nations.The empirical evidence on the determinants of educational performance overwhelmingly shows that at given levels of expenditures, an increase in the amount of resources used does not generally lead to an increase in educational performance. The lack of a strong and systematic relationship between resources and performance has been shown within the UnitedStates (Hanushek 1986(Hanushek , 1996 , RES 1996, and FRBNY 1998 3 international differences in student performance levels in mathematics and science are a fact, and it is obvious and generally accepted that differences in the amount of inputs used do not suffice as an explanation of their occurrence. The TIMSS micro data base begs a wealth of information to understand these differences, because it is based on performance tests of individual students in about 40 count...

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A review of the measures of the stock of human capital used in empirical growth research -including adult literacy rates, school enrollment ratios, and average years of schooling of the working-age population -reveals that human capital is mostly poorly proxied. The simple use of the most common proxy, average years of schooling, misspecifies the relationship between education and the stock of human capital. Based on human capital theory, the specification of human capital is extended to allow for decreasing returns to education and for differences in the quality of a year of education. The different specifications give rise to hugely differing measures of the stock of human capital across countries, and development-accounting results show that misspecified human capital measures can lead to severe underestimation of the development effect of human capital.