This two-volume set answers a pair of important questions. Volume 3 asks "How does education affect economic and social outcomes, and how can it inform public policy?" Its contributors, with the help of new methodological approaches, cover econometric methods and international test score data and examine the determinants of educational outcomes and issues surrounding teacher salaries and licensure. Reflecting government demands for more evidence-based policies, they take new looks at institutional features of school systems. Volume 4 considers "What is the value of an education?" School choice and school competition, educator incentives, the college premium, and other considerations help its contributors make sense of the investments and returns associated with education.
A collection of short, stand-alone chapters divided into five sections including overview of the field; private and social returns to human capital investments; production, costs and financing of education; teachers and teacher labor markets; and education markets, choice and incentives. The collection provides international perspectives that describe the origins of these subjects, their major issues and proponents, their landmark studies, and opportunities for future research. The 70 contributors are each well-regarded economists whose research has advanced the topic on which they write, and this book fulfills an undersupplied niche for a text in the economics of education. The chapters come from the acclaimed International Encyclopedia of Education, 3e (2010), edited by Eva Baker, Barry McGaw, and Penelope Peterson. The Encyclopedia contains over 1,350 articles in 24 sections that stretch from educational philosophies and technologies to measurement, leadership, and national systems of education.
