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Causal Evaluation of Educational Policies

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Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics

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Abstract

Economics of education has experienced an impressive transformation and growth over the last 70 years. From the initial theoretical considerations about human capital, a field has developed, especially in the last 20 years, in which almost every second study focuses on the causal evaluation of educational policies. This growth appears to be continuing. In the relevant economic journals, over 4,100 studies have been published in the last decade with an increasing trend. The main reasons for this are the increase in the availability of better quantitative and qualitative data, the improvement of causal methods that have been adapted particularly from labor economics, and the interconnections of economics of education with other fields of research. The massive increase in causal evaluations has been triggered further by the growing demand for evidence-based policymaking. Educational policies are justified if they are effective (and efficient) in reaching a given objective. For this reason, it is not expected that this trend will change in the next few years. On the contrary, it seems that the development is not yet at an end. Given the vast number of studies providing causal effects of education policies from all over the world today, more effort should be devoted in conducting meta-analyses (also incorporating the growing potential of artificial intelligence methods) to isolate general patterns relevant for the design of educational policies.

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The research was supported by Celine Schoe and Zhanylai Asankulova. All remaining errors are the sole responsibility of the authors.

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    Dennis H. Meier & Stephan Thomsen

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Meier, D.H., Thomsen, S. (2023). Causal Evaluation of Educational Policies. In: Zimmermann, K.F. (eds) Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_353-1

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