NBER Papers in the Economics of Education
The NBER’s Economics of Education Program has just celebrated its first anniversary,having started officially in September 2001. However, the program was created to recognize the large and rapidly growing body of economic research on education. It was felt that education, asa topic, needed a home of its own, partly to encourage progress and partly to encourage rigor.Progress happens faster when economists researching the same topic talk to one another, instead of each presenting research to his own field audience. Education topics force researchers to drawupon several economic fields, so rigor is enhanced when public economists ensure that theirfellow researchers get the public economics right, macroeconomists ensure that themacroeconomics is right, and so on. Members of The Economics of Education Program aredrawn from labor economics, public economics, macroeconomics and growth, industrial organization and contracts, development economics, and urban economics. Every field makes its special contribution.