Knowledge Capital and the Growth of US States

In another strand of research on knowledge capital next to the international analyses, we study whether the substantial differences in GDP per capita that exist across US states are related to the education of the population. We develop detailed measures of the knowledge capital of each state's population that do not just reflect the quantity of education, but also its quality as measured by test scores. We find that differences in knowledge capital account for 20-30 percent of the state variation in per-capita GDP. These results also allow us to quantify the substantial economic gains that could be reaped from improvements of the schools in the US states.

Research papers:

Knowledge Capital and Aggregate Income Differences: Development Accounting for US States (with E.A. Hanushek and J. Ruhose). American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 9 (4): 184-224, 2017

Economic Gains from Educational Reform by US States (with E.A. Hanushek and J. Ruhose). Journal of Human Capital 11 (4): 447-486, 2017

Non-technical contribution:

It Pays to Improve School Quality (with Eric A. Hanushek and Jens Ruhose). Education Next 16 (3): 52-60, 2016

Book on how the low achievement level of US schools endangers prosperity:

Endangering Prosperity: A Global View of the American School (with E.A. Hanushek and P.E. Peterson). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2013

With a foreword by Lawrence H. Summers, former US Secretary of the Treasury and President of Harvard University

Hilarious video on the book "Endangering Prosperity" in which Dashton explains the meaning of the number 32:

Material available only in German

Interview related to "Endangering Prosperity" book:

Rechnen macht reich (with E.A. Hanushek). Die Zeit, 26.9.2013, pp. 87-88

Google Sites

Report abuse