Eric Hanushek:

About

Eric Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University and a professor, by courtesy, of Education. He is one of the world’s leading scholars in the economics of education, with influential research that has shaped education policy globally. His studies on teacher effectiveness, school accountability, class size, and the economic returns to educational quality are widely cited. In 2021, he received the Yidan Prize for Education Research, the most prestigious international award in the field, and used the prize money to establish the Africa Fellows in Education Program, aimed at improving education policy in Sub-Saharan Africa. Hanushek has authored or edited 26 books and over 300 articles, and he serves as a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and as the area coordinator for Economics of Education of the CESifo Research Network. He is a fellow of both the Society of Labor Economists and the American Educational Research Association. His previous academic appointments include the University of Rochester, Yale University, and the U.S. Air Force Academy. His public service roles include being a commissioner on the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission, chair of the National Board for Education Sciences from 2008 to 2010, Deputy Director of the Congressional Budget Office from 1983 to 1985, and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board from 2019 to 2023. He is a member…

Research topics

• Psychology
• Computer Science
• Economics
• Economic growth
• Management
• Engineering
• Social psychology
• Geography
• Microeconomics
• Mathematics education

Selected publications

• Education production functions

  Elsevier eBooks · 2020 · 217 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Education, knowledge capital, and economic growth

  Elsevier eBooks · 2020 · 189 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Age and cognitive skills: Use it or lose it

  Science Advances · 2025-03-05 · 24 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Cross-sectional age-skill profiles suggest that cognitive skills start declining by age 30 if not earlier. If accurate, such age-driven skill losses pose a major threat to the human capital of societies with rapidly aging populations. We estimate actual age-skill profiles from individual changes in literacy and numeracy skills at different ages. We use the unique German longitudinal component of the Programme of the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC-L) that retested a large r…

  PublisherDOI

• Understanding trends in Chinese skill premiums, 2007–2018

  Journal of Comparative Economics · 2025-04-18 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Patience and Subnational Differences in Human Capital: Regional Analysis with Facebook Interests

  The Economic Journal · 2025-06-17 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Decisions to invest in human capital depend on people's time preferences. This paper shows that differences in patience are closely related to substantial subnational differences in educational achievement, leading to new perspectives on long-standing within-country disparities. We use social media data—Facebook interests—to construct novel regional measures of patience within Italy and the United States. The approach is first validated with a cross-country analysis of patience and Face…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Ludger Woessmann

  442 shared

• Steven G. Rivkin

  University of Illinois Chicago

  348 shared

• Simon Wiederhold

  103 shared

• Guido Schwerdt

  100 shared

• John F. Kain

  96 shared

• Gregory F. Branch

  Saudi Aramco (Saudi Arabia)

  57 shared

• Rolf van der Velden

  Maastricht University

  49 shared

• Stan Vermeulen

  Maastricht University

  49 shared

Awards & honors

• Yidan Prize for Education Research (2021)

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