Handbook of the Economics of Education

Stephen J. Machin is a Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, has been President of the European Association of Labour Economists, is a Fellow of the Society of Labor Economists and was an independent member of the UK Low Pay Commission from 2007-14. He was Chair of the Economics and Econometrics sub-panel of the UK's 2021 Research Excellence Framework. He is also Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Being interested in the determinants of long-term prosperity of mankind, his main research focus is on the economics of education, especially the importance of education for economic prosperity and the effects of school systems on educational achievement and equality of opportunity. He is internationally recognized for his economic analysis of educational issues, and his research has had broad influence on education policy in both developed and developing countries. He received the Yidan Prize for Education Research in 2021. He is the author of numerous widely-cited studies on the effects of class size reduction, school accountability, teacher effectiveness, and other topics. He was the first to research teacher effectiveness by measuring students' learning gains, which forms the conceptual basis for using value-added measures to evaluate teachers and schools, now a widely adopted practice. His recent book with Ludger Woessmann, The Knowledge Capital of Nations: Education and the Economics of Growth summarizes research establishing the close links between countries' long-term rates of economic growth and the skill levels of their populations. He has authored or edited twenty-five books along with over 300 articles.