The Economics of Education : Unkept Promises ?

In the introduction of the Handbook of Health Economics, Anthony Cuyler and Joseph Newhouse (2000) have contended that the economics of education was not very successful as a field and that it was comparatively lagging behind health economics. The latter had been much more active and able to accumulate much firmer results. Indeed, "whereas the economics of education seems to have atrophied, however, health economics has flourished and provided practical answers to practical questions as well as developing its own distinctive theoretical modes. Education economists have largely failed to resolve their own research agenda (the determination of earnings differentials, the contribution of education to economic growth, the social rate of return to training and education, the optimal size of schools and classes, the use of primitive outcome measures...). Blaug (1998, p.S66) comments that virtually all of the 100 articles in the 1985 International Encyclopaedia of Education devoted to the economics of education could just as well have been written in 1970 or even 1960" (Cuyler and Newhouse, 2000, p.3). Is it a provocative stance, or does it embody at least some elements of truth ? The objective of this special issue of the Brussels Economic Review is to present a series of pieces of research, both theoretical and applied, even policy-oriented, in order to let the reader judge by himself. In this very short introduction, we would like to remind the history of the field of economics of education, and then situate the various contributions in this context.