This dissertation consists of four studies on the role of institutions, education and institutional reform in economic development. Three of the studies examine empirical aspects of the issue and the fourth provides an analysis of policy implications. A key theme of the dissertation is the recognition that institutions, both formal and informal, are important for development. The observation that some developing economies have been unable to substantively improve institutional structures, creates a vital agenda for studying institutional change. The first study empirically investigates the impact of education, both quantitatively and qualitatively, on the informal institution of social capital measured as social trust. Differences in levels of education are considered to find the separate effects of primary, secondary and tertiary education. The relationship between education and social trust levels in countries is found to be positive. The sample is further split into developed and developing countries which also substantiates the main hypothesis. The results can be interpreted as schooling playing a transformative role in the society. The second study develops a framework for studying education inequality and institutional development. A range of economic, political and social measures of institutional quality are used in a cross-country analysis. The study confirms that the cross-country differences in institutional variables are influenced negatively by the education inequality. Several competing hypotheses of institutional improvement are used to test the sensitivity of the results. The sample is further split into OECD and non-OECD countries, with no new results arising from this split. The third study investigates the relationship of education inequality and institutional quality using panel data techniques and an alternative data set of institutional measures, than the one used in the second study. This study initially estimates the relationship using the pooled OLS and fixed effects models. The issue of persistency in institutional variables is then investigated by using a system GMM estimator. The evidence suggests that the impact of reducing education inequality is associated with improvements in institutional quality. The fourth study analyses the implications from the first three studies with reference to the institutional reform agenda. Insight is given for improving the reform process. Areas of context specificity and sequencing of reforms are dealt with, using country examples. The intuition from this essay is that educational equality is a deliberate initiative which needs to be carried out through policy initiatives, although the process adopted would depend on the specific economy. It is suggested that there is a need to change the fundamental focus from emphasis on altering formal rules, to considering the current underlying structures in societies as a constraint, in developing a way forward to improving the reform agenda.

This dissertation consists of four studies on the role of institutions, education and institutional reform in economic development. Three of the studies examine empirical aspects of the issue and the fourth provides an analysis of policy implications. A key theme of the dissertation is the recognition that institutions, both formal and informal, are important for development. The observation that some developing economies have been unable to substantively improve institutional structures, creates a vital agenda for studying institutional change. The first study empirically investigates the impact of education, both quantitatively and qualitatively, on the informal institution of social capital measured as social trust. Differences in levels of education are considered to find the separate effects of primary, secondary and tertiary education. The relationship between education and social trust levels in countries is found to be positive. The sample is further split into developed and developing countries which also substantiates the main hypothesis. The results can be interpreted as schooling playing a transformative role in the society. The second study develops a framework for studying education inequality and institutional development. A range of economic, political and social measures of institutional quality are used in a cross-country analysis. The study confirms that the cross-country differences in institutional variables are influenced negatively by the education inequality. Several competing hypotheses of institutional improvement are used to test the sensitivity of the results. The sample is further split into OECD and non-OECD countries, with no new results arising from this split. The third study investigates the relationship of education inequality and institutional quality using panel data techniques and an alternative data set of institutional measures, than the one used in the second study. This study initially estimates the relationship using the pooled OLS and fixed effects models. The issue of persistency in institutional variables is then investigated by using a system GMM estimator. The evidence suggests that the impact of reducing education inequality is associated with improvements in institutional quality. The fourth study analyses the implications from the first three studies with reference to the institutional reform agenda. Insight is given for improving the reform process. Areas of context specificity and sequencing of reforms are dealt with, using country examples. The intuition from this essay is that educational equality is a deliberate initiative which needs to be carried out through policy initiatives, although the process adopted would depend on the specific economy. It is suggested that there is a need to change the fundamental focus from emphasis on altering formal rules, to considering the current underlying structures in societies as a constraint, in developing a way forward to improving the reform agenda.

This research is an application of the Capabilities Approach to a southern educational context, aiming to answer how children’s capabilities differ across different types of schooling (public, private and religious) in Pakistan. While conventional research on education in the country dwells on aspects like economic returns to education or qualitative differences in public and private provision, a broader perspective addressing the institutionalization of a tier-ed education structure and its consequences for school-going children remains missing. The current study is an incubation of the same perspective; it asks: how do primary school going children’s educational capabilities differ across different types of schooling in Pakistan?, and by re-framing the question of education equality as a capabilities one, sheds light on appropriate ways of conceptualizing and measuring educational capabilities in a developing country context. Since the use of capabilities with respect to Pakistan’s school diversity is an innovative research area, it justifies the choice of a mixed-methods research design. The qualitative phase comprises focus groups with children and their parents aimed at balancing universal lists of educational capabilities with local insights. The quantitative phase involves a capabilities questionnaire for children built using both theoretical and local valuations as well as a household survey to obtain richer information on each child participant. Qualitative findings for the study reflect on contextualized dimensions of theoretically relevant educational capabilities as well as two new capability categories – Religion and Values and Etiquettes – valued by participants. Quantitative findings for the study discuss (i) differences in children’s educational capabilities across school types in Pakistan, and (ii) the individual, family and household factors potentially explaining such variation. Together, the two sets of findings highlight the complexities in development and evaluation of educational capabilities amidst school diversity in Pakistan and reveal important conclusions for the country’s education policy planning and development.

Using the IIASA/VID dataset of populations by age, sex and level of education, I calculate education Gini coeffients and decompose the overall degree of educational inequality into age, sex and within-group components. I analyze the relative relevance of these components for inequality reduction and investigate the distributional outcomes of education expansion. I find that, on average, equalization between males and females, younger and older cohorts as well as within these subgroups of the population has significantly contributed to declining educational inequality over the observed sample period around the globe. But the relative role of these components fluctuates in the process of education expansion. First, as improvements are initiated by enhancing the educational opportunities of the youth, the gap between cohorts widens in transition phases but vanishes thereafter. Second, gaps between sexes have been reduced but are predicted to widen again if either males or females are the first to enter higher education levels. To a lesser extent, this is also true for gaps within population subgroups which can be due to the ethnic background or the social and economic status of people. / Series: INEQ Working Paper Series

The issue of income equality has become of great concern on a global scale. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, economists and other socioeconomic analysts have observed the state of the income and wealth gap between the top ten percent rich and the lower forty percent poor of populations, and its far-reaching impact on the lives of ordinary people. Income inequality has become a global challenge and the effects are felt in both developed and developing countries. The socioeconomic disparity between the rich and poor is pronounced in developing countries, and recent trends of growing inequality are being observed in developed countries. This research examines the effect of education on income inequality and GDP per capita, using a panel dataset of 18 selected sub-Saharan countries for the period from 1994 to 2015. The panel models are estimated, using the fixed effects, random effects and generalised methods of moments estimation techniques. The results show that the relationship of education and its impact on income inequality is dependent on the level of education being assessed. High resource input in tertiary education increases income inequality, while high resource input in lower educational levels reduces income inequality. Overall, increases in government expenditure on education lead to increase in inequality and a fall in GDP per capita. These results show possible inefficiencies in the allocation of educational resources in sub-Saharan countries during the period of investigation. Government spending on education does not reduce inequality or boost income unless it is done efficiently. To reduce income inequality and increase average income, educational resources must be efficiently allocated with priority given to the educational levels of the highest proportions of the population.

Preschool attendance is widely recognized as a key ingredient for later socioeconomic success, mothers' labor market participation, and leveling the playing field for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, the empirical evidence for these claims is still relatively scarce, particularly in Europe. Using data from the 2011 Austrian European Union Statistics of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), we contribute to this literature in all mentioned dimensions. In particular, we investigate the effect of preschool attendance on an individual's later educational attainment, the probability that they work full time and their hourly wages, the likelihood of the mother working when the child is 14 years old, and on the overall distribution of wages. We find strong and positive effects of preschool attendance on educational attainment, the probability of working full time, hourly wages, and the probability that the mother is in the labor market. Full time workers at the bottom and the top of the distribution tend to benefit less than those in the middle. Women in particular benefit more in terms of years of schooling and the probability of working full time. Other disadvantaged groups (second migration migrants; people with less educated parents) also often benefit more in terms of education and work. (authors' abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

We construct a new dataset of inequality in educational attainment by age and sex at the global level. The comparison of education inequality measures across age groups allows us to assess the effect of inter-generational education attainment trends on economic growth. Our results indicate that countries which are able to reduce the inequality of educational attainment of young cohorts over time tend to have higher growth rates of income per capita. This effect is additional to that implied by the accumulation of human capital and implies that policies aiming at providing broad-based access to schooling have returns in terms of economic growth that go beyond those achieved by increasing average educational attainment. / Series: WWWforEurope

Preschool attendance is widely recognized as a key ingredient for later socioeconomic success, mothers' labor market participation, and leveling the playing field for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, the empirical evidence for these claims is still relatively scarce, particularly in Europe. Using data from the 2011 Austrian European Union Statistics of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), we contribute to this literature by studying the effects of having attended preschool for the adult Austrian population. We find strong and positive effects of preschool attendance on later educational attainment, the probability of working full time, hourly wages, and the probability that the mother is in the labor market. Full time workers at the bottom and the top of the distribution benefit less than those in the middle. Women in particular benefit more in terms of years of schooling and the probability of working full time. Other disadvantaged groups (second generation migrants; people with less educated parents) also often benefit more in terms of education and work.

This thesis explicates how an international literacy testing (ILT) initiative, overseen by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), is put to use to coordinate teaching and learning in adult literacy education programs in Canada, and in Ontario in particular. The testing initiative was conceived to manage and monitor global literacy resources, and promote their development for economic productivity and competitive advantage. Guided by institutional ethnography, the analysis reveals how certain operational and support devices of the testing initiative have been transposed into the context of adult education and training, carrying with them the ideological concerns of the economistic testing project and some of its methodological procedures. Various devices and technologies of the ILT are reformulated as individual assessments for adult learners, and are also incorporated— as is and with extensions— into a national occupational skills framework, a provincial curriculum reform, and a series of policy persuasion projects. Educators, program coordinators and curriculum developers, concerned with the development of literacy that is responsive to learners and their aspirations, recognize the limitations of the curricular frameworks and assessments. They devote inordinate amounts of time and effort reformulating, translating, force-fitting, and supplementing them. At the same time, a narrowly conceived locating information pedagogy—distinct from both academic literacy needed to access formal education systems and a responsive and situated literacy needed to actively participate in social practices—is developed and widely promoted. Policy entrepreneurs have incorporated the devices into their policy persuasion projects, including a project that profiles adults according to their literacy proficiency, their value in the labour market and whether or not they are ‘economically efficient’ to educate. Persuasion tactics are aimed at policy-makers and adult educators in order to convince them to shift educational support away from those who already experience limited access to educational opportunities (adults with secondary education or less) to those closest to reaching what is deemed to be an acceptable literacy level (adults with post-secondary education). Attempts to limit and privilege the purpose of adult education and training, in combination with the development of curricula and assessments that do the same, obstruct and contradict efforts to support equitable literacy learning opportunities for Canadian adults.

In the last fifteen years, the Brazilian government has implemented educational policies intended to expand access to higher education for students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. At the same time, research has observed the increase in the demand for international mobility of students from middle and upper classes. This PhD thesis aimed to understand the e↵ect of international mobility among Brazilian undergraduate students on educational inequality by examining the Science Without Borders (SWB) programme. This programme was established in July 2011 by the Brazilian Federal Government with the aim to promote the expansion and the internationalisation of science and technology, and increase Brazilian competitiveness through international exchange and mobility. The programme distributed 101,000 scholarships between 2011 and 2015 for undergraduate and graduate Brazilian students to study in a foreign university. The thesis draws on research on educational inequalities and international mobility. The research on education inequalities showed that in many developed countries, after the expansion of education, students from privileged socioeconomic backgrounds seek to maintain their education advantage through distinctive educational trajectories. The international mobility research also indicated that students from more advantageous socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to pursue international mobility as a strategy for maintaining their privilege. However, international mobility programmes that o↵er financial bursary attract students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds as well. Hence, this research examined whether international mobility programmes which o↵er scholarships may operate as a mechanism for opening up opportunities in the education system. The dataset used for the study was created thanks to the collaboration of three di↵erent intuitions: the two funding bodies of the SWB programme and the National Institute for Educational Studies and Research (INEP). The negotiations to access the data lasted around a year and a half, and was only agreed after the anonymity of the students were guaranteed. INEP merged data from the High School National Exam (ENEM) datasets with the information provided by the two funding bodies to identify students who attended the SWB programme between 2011 and 2014. Probit regression models were used to examine the association between students’ socioeconomic backgrounds and the likelihood of participating in the SWB programme. The models showed that students with parents with higher levels of education and higher income were more likely to receive a SWB scholarship. In other words, there was inequality in access to the programme. Therefore, the financial bursary o↵ered by the Brazilian government did not eliminate the e↵ect of students’ socioeconomic characteristics on access to this programme. Multilevel models were used to analyse the association between students’ socioeconomic background and prestige of the foreign university attended. The models demonstrated that there was also inequality within the SWB programme: students from more advantageous socioeconomic background tended to study in more prestigious universities. These results corroborate the results from the international mobility literature and suggest that students from privileged socioeconomic backgrounds might pursue international mobility to maintain educational advantages. These results have important implications for educational policies in Brazil. In addition to the e↵ort to expand access to higher education, the government should also assure that inequalities are not being transferred to other areas, such as in the case of international mobility.