Harry Anthony Patrinos

Addressing climate change requires individual behavior change and voter support for pro-climate policies, yet surprisingly little is known about how to achieve these outcomes. In this paper, we estimate causal effects of additional education on pro-climate outcomes using new compulsory schooling law data across 20 European countries. We analyze effects on pro-climate beliefs and behaviors, as well as novel data on policy preferences and voting for green parties. Results show that a year of education substantially increases pro-climate beliefs, behaviors, and policy preferences.

This study examines the private monetary rate of return to schooling in Afghanistan. We use two novel datasets—a series of nationally representative household surveys (2007, 2014, 2020) and administrative data on public employees in 2018—and apply OLS, Heckman selection correction, and instrumental-variables estimation to measure returns to education. We find that one additional year of schooling, on average, is associated with a 3 to 7 percent increase in monthly income for wage earners, with higher returns for women. The schooling premium extends beyond the public sector into the broader labor market, where the gender pay gap is noticeable. We show that bans on women’s employment and schooling can translate into substantial income losses at both individual and national levels. These findings contribute to the literature on the economics of education in conflict-affected settings and underscore the role of sustained human capital investment.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered widespread school closures affecting over one billion children worldwide, with potentially lasting effects on learning. Leveraging data from the 2023 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), covering 71 education systems and spanning two decades, we quantify the global impact of pandemic-related disruptions on student achievement in mathematics and science. Using mixed-effects models, we estimate deviations from pre-pandemic trends, adjusting for demographic and school-level factors. We find that average achievement declined by 0.11 standard deviations globally, with longer school closures associated with larger losses. Disadvantaged groups—including low performers, girls, and linguistic minorities—experienced greater setbacks, reaching up to 0.23 standard deviations. These findings reveal a persistent global learning crisis and highlight the urgent need for targeted policy responses to address educational inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in significant disruption in schooling worldwide. Global test score data is used to estimate learning losses by modeling the effect of school closures on achievement by predicting the deviation of the most recent results from a linear trend using data from all rounds of PISA. Mathematics scores declined an average of 14 percent of a standard deviation, roughly equal to seven months of learning. Losses are greater for students in schools that faced relatively longer closures, for boys, immigrants, and disadvantaged students. Educational losses may translate into significant national income losses over time.

The Mincer equation—arguably the most widely used in empirical work—can be used to explain a host of economic, and even non-economic, phenomena. One such application involves explaining (and estimating) employment earnings as a function of schooling and labor market experience. The Mincer equation provides estimates of the average monetary returns of one additional year of education. This information is important for policymakers who must decide on education spending, prioritization of schooling levels, and education financing programs such as student loans.