Historical Origins of Schooling: The Role of Democracy and Political Decentralization
研究各国教育水平差异的根源，发现民主化促进初等教育发展，而政治分权则对更高级别的教育有显著正向影响，且这些政治制度受殖民历史影响。
Why does schooling attainment vary widely across countries? Why are differences in schooling attainment highly persistent? I show that cross-country differences in schooling are related to political institutions, such as democracy and local democracy (political decentralization), which are affected by colonial factors. By using the number of native cultures before colonization as an instrument for political decentralization, I show that after controlling for the causal effect of income on schooling, the degree of democratization positively affects the development of primary education, whereas political decentralization has a positive and significant impact on more advanced levels of schooling. © 2010 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.