The relative importance of total factor productivity and factors of production in income per worker: Evidence from the Brazilian states

Education Quality and Returns to Schooling: Evidence from Migrants in Brazil

“…All told, taking education quality into account increases human capital's explanatory power by 60%, implying that this is an important component to consider if one is interested in understanding economic development within regions of a country. Those findings are consistent with the human capital data constructed in Figueiredo and Nakabashi (2016), which imply that human capital accounts for 27% of output per worker variability across Brazilian states. Our results are also quantitatively similar to recent quality-adjusted development accounting studies conducted for U.S. states (Hanushek et al, 2015), and to recent cross-country exercises (Schoellman, 2012).…”

“…This is evidence that education quality is a very important component to consider if one is interested in studying education in Brazil. Figueiredo and Nakabashi (2016) construct two quality-adjusted human capital variables for Brazilian states using 2000 data. The first variable relies on Ideb test scores, 12 and the second one is based on each state's mean expected earnings, conditional on the education and experience levels of the working-age population.…”

“…We do not consider Ideb in this paper because it is available only from 2005, a relatively recent year. Our dataset contains information on individuals who were working in 2010, and most of them studied many years before 2005.13Figueiredo and Nakabashi's (2016) human capital variable produced through Ideb test scores displays very large variability, generating variance and percentile ratios equal to 0.37 and 0.72.…”