What’s the big idea? The big question for many countries is: “How can the education system be, and stay, this bad?” What are the political conditions in which governments can, and do, maintain schools that provide so little learning?
“The Politics of Learning: Directions for Future Research.” 2018. RISE working paper 18/020.
“What Education Production Functions Really Show: A Positive Model of the Allocation of Educational Expenditures.” Economics of Education Review, March 1999. (with Deon Filmer).
The State, Socialisation, and Private Schooling: When Will Governments Support Alternative Producers? 2015 (with Martina Viarengo).
“The Policy Irrelevance of the Economics of Education: Is ‘Normative as Positive’ Useless, or Worse?” 2008. in “What Works in Development?: Thinking Big and Thinking Small. William Easterly and Jessica Cohen (eds.) Washington DC: Brookings, 2008.
Education: Alternative Perspective.” 2013. in Global Problems, Smart Solutions: Costs and Benefits. Bjørn Lomborg, ed., 2013.
“Ought Ain’t is: Midnight Thoughts on Education” Brussels Economic Review. 2004.
“‘When Will They Ever Learn?’: Why All Governments Produce Schooling.” BREAD Working Paper no. 53, January 2002.
Agustina Paglayan is doing super interesting work on these questions of the politics of why governments might both expand schooling and yet produce so little learning.