Rates of Return to Education: Conceptual and Methodological Issues

Abstract

One of the main characteristics of economic policy-making in the postwar period was the rise of international agencies and their influence in setting the agenda in various policy aspects. Education was one of the areas that became very important to the activity of international agencies. This article analyses the changing views about education of the World Bank, from the late forties to the mid-eighties, and the way its priorities and approach to education were moulded by the dissemination of human capital theory. The analysis will emphasise the difficulties faced to the diffusion of this approach in a context largely favourable and dominated by manpower planning and different policy views about education, providing an interesting example about the complexities of the dissemination of economic ideas within international organisations.