Economic Development, Human Capital, and Private Sector Interests

Motivated by the widespread agreement that economic and private sector development depend on the level of human capital, and that the level of human capital in turn depends on government policy decisions concerning the provision of education, this project seeks to understand why some countries provide not just greater access to schooling but also higher-quality education than others. Understanding what drives some governments to invest more in human capital development is crucial to improve the effectiveness of international development efforts. In particular, I am interested in understanding the role that private sector actors and organizations have played in shaping education policy decisions, and hope to identify the conditions and private sector coalitions that facilitate the introduction of reforms to improve not just the quantity but also the quality of education provided by the public sector. My approach to address the question of why some countries provide more and better education than others, and to understand the role that private sector interests have played in the education sector, begins with the construction of a historical dataset that enables me to identify when the patterns of education provision that we observe today emerged in different countries. I then use this dataset to test — through econometric analyses and carefully chosen comparative case studies — alternative theories of why these patterns emerged, including theories about the role of the private sector.