ladies and gentlemen good afternoon it's just seen among the different characters and celebrities aware of the past nine years of the economics festival a major economist Gary Baker who died a month ago as you probably know and I'd like to recall his memory and Gary Baker as all the delegates to as all the delegates know is the person who invented a notion of words but turn out to be extremely successful and that is of human capital I'm extremely pleased now to introduce a scholar who is perhaps one of the most distinguished expert when it comes to human capital he's the one who really studied it to the most incredible detail he had presents us with an historical background that certainly was part of the bakers and the Chicago School approach so historical background of the capital of the human capital and the connections between the human capital economics and the institutions so basically he's an expert on the economics and history of institutions last night we talked about education and this is what he's going to touch upon and all the issues emerging from the combination of the above subject so there's a subject which is very closer to normal Newton's I hope I pronounce it correctly says a gentleman and he'll refer to social mobility why's it worth to make certain investments attending certain schools learning certain contents and he's going to expand on the choices of the elites when it comes to education with all the dangers and the lessons that can be learned when it comes to ideology in the structure resulting from these choices the subject of today it might seem problematic and enigmatic but as a matter of fact it is not because it refers at a very specific it studies no amusement indeed is a scholar in developing very enlightening case stories covering both the past and the present time so indeed at the title of his presentation is from the blown university the pecking university elect school and politics he will share with us a number or a most important he cannot example when it comes to the law school in Vilonia the most ancient law school in bologna and he's going to refer to what happens what is happening at present in china his perspective is that of the elite how the elite put together a special education path that according to human obey their own interests in a way or support their own interests running against another issue that of developing new debt so that are promoting the turnover in the retail as a matter of fact Italy is famous when it comes to the turnover of elites and we've heard a very interesting reference to that when Renzi talked here the praetorium premier said yesterday here at Trento in having young people in the ruling positions in government from institutions so we're now going to hear also about that they degree as adequacy as it where of our in education structures that again subject that has been touched upon those soulless yesterday afternoon another very important subject is that of social mobility as I hinted to earlier on so we're going to be presented with specific case studies and learn a lesson out of them as they can be extremely comparable now I won't list all the wonderful things all the wonderful working progress that have been achieved and completed well the curriculum is quite extraordinary because he really has a vast culture without barriers he's covered different subjects there's a publication that he recently made at the on the metal middle age universities and by the way the Bologna University for fell into this list and then there's another essay on middle age university law schools and revolution economics economic revolution and then there are other papers and this is a pretty interesting to us as Italian so as I was saying there's another study on crime punishment in politics and this certainly recalls bacteria to us Italians and again the title then reads and analysis political cycles in the criminal sentencing so I refer to Gary Baker and Chicago and he's also attended Harvard her two most important schools where he really also got to know of different approaches or so I believe that his take is one that can drew the benefit from learning from different economics doctrine and from different perspectives it is with great pleasure that I'd like to give them the floor for him to hold this lecture some Q&A session will follow and having said as much I'd like to thank you for that very nice introduction Armando so and and thank you everybody for coming I want to thank Tito for inviting me I was very very happy to see in his essay actually introducing the festival in fact some discussion of exactly what I'm going to start with which which is this this link that we have I think in our in our minds across cultures across time between the elite the ruling class and and the types of schools that they attend so I found that very nice and and I look forward to conversations about this with with all of you the other thing I want to mention is that I have a you know a long list of papers but but that's very much a product of a long list of great co-authors and so I want to tell you that that all of this work builds on on research that you can find on my website you'll see the list of co-authors on my website but I should you know thank them by name Suresh Naidu you you Chun David Jong Jai and John David yang sorry Jane Zhang and especially a collaborator on on several of these projects who's been a long-term collaborator and great friend David akin Tony so this is is my work my ideas but also their work and ideas okay so so now let's get to the meat of it this this I think is is super exciting I could talk for hours about it so I need to talk slowly to make sure that that the interpretation works as I said this that's not easy for me sometimes as I said we often link the elites in any society to their schools David Cameron you know elegant British chap attends Eton and Oxford fittingly George Bush there are two of them attended two different posh schools as well Andover and Yale in the United States yes both schools yes both presidents who Jintao Xi Jinping the last two presidents of China attended a different type of school attended Ching hua which is an elite school certainly we could talk about this but just to flag it for now it's it's an engineering school it's a technical school it's a math and science school quite different from from the schools of the the other heads of state that I pointed to finally just another one Bill and Hillary past and perhaps future presidents met at Yale Law School so as Tito suggested I think in in his essay and I would have suggested independently we often link the elite to their schools there's a joke that you'll sometimes see in British TV about you know both English universities the the joke being that there there are in fact more than two but the elite only recognized to France is grande Ecole which I spelled incorrectly I'm an American America has its Ivy League China has Bayda which is more of you know somewhat more of an Arts and Sciences University more and more on the liberal arts side ching hai's i said is more technical these are two elite universities that that produce a ruling class in China one thing that I wanted to add that that you know just popped into my mind this morning you know and we could talk about this for hours I think is you know we're where else is this embedded in our culture so Harry Potter as one more example that probably will be more influential than than almost anyone else maybe anyone even speaking at this conference in shaping the way people view the world and view elites Harry Potter is a book in which or a series of books in which the elite within a particular group all come from particular schools in in Britain they all come from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry I believe that's so I admit I did read the books so in in in other places in times you'll see military schools playing a role you know perhaps it's a nice thing that military schools seem to play less of an important role these days I'll you know John McCain in the US was the last gasp so you know this this is the the this you know framing for a discussion that we could have again I think for hours so why is it that we associate elites with with schools and why is it that we care so much about educational institutions when we think about things like social mobility the existence of a ruling class the opportunity for you know achieving a better life I think we think about this because sort of the two defining characteristics of an elite or a ruling class and the two components these two objectives of the ruling class are inextricably linked to schools so the first characteristic of a ruling class is the ruling class is typically rich financially economically there they are wealthy they have high incomes or both and this defines the ruling class it also to some extent defines their first objective which is maintaining their income and their consumption either for themselves or for their descendants and schools produce economic consequences for the ruling class directly and indirectly so the rule class wants to send their kids to good schools because their kids will get skills their kids will be parts of social networks that are valuable and that increases income directly for for the ruling class family for their kids indirectly the ruling class also in many cases wants a society that that is is rich so it's it's often not in in the interests of the ruling class to keep people poor sometimes it is of course but but certainly not always and so the ruling class will will care about schools that generate wealth for a society as a whole and and new technologies and so on the second thing that defines a ruling class and that the ruling class cares about maintaining is is some sort of status so the the ruling class will I think often view education as a crucial input into their status you know in part through the income Channel that I talked about initially but also for other social reasons so education makes it look like people are qualified so George Bush has a degree from Yale I mean that doesn't imply that the guy earned it to be clear but it does look like he has a very very nice degree that many people work extremely hard to acquire that provides some legitimacy it makes the elite look more meritocratic and and some I don't mean to say that that these schools are never meritocratic to some extent they certainly will be and I think the elite will want to have meritocratic selection into the ruling class to some extent they want to have strong intelligent high ability peers to network with to rule with you know in the past to form families with and so on so the we want some churning of course and and they want that churning to give them legitimacy and schools provide that in many cases in addition schools play a crucial role in shaping attitudes and the elite want to shape the attitudes of their own kids of the the future elite and they want to shape the the attitudes of the masses who may eventually threaten the elite or who may aspire to join the elite and so that that channel of shaping attitudes is also important and it's important again both because the elite care about the ideas of the future elite and because they want to reduce threats from from challengers so schools and are part of what will shape a ruling class and what will produce a ruling class the income they produce through the status they confer but what you know becomes interesting I think as an economist is is thinking about a ruling class that's shaped by schools but is also shaped through some sort of political economy process by the ruling class and you know we could talk about different policy choices that the ruling class might have but just to put a few up there how many schools will exist how many slots there are who can attend so thinking again about about Harry Potter I have no idea how many of you have read Harry Potter but but you know one of one of the the interesting social political economy questions facing the wizard elite in Harry Potter are whether half wizards or wizards born to non wizard parents are allowed to attend that is is you know very very reminiscent of decisions made by America's elite universities in terms of whether Jews could attend in the early 20th century today how many slots should be opened up to kids from overseas to Asian American students and so on so who can study who can acquire this status is is to some extent a choice that the ruling class makes today which will shape the ruling class of tomorrow and and finally what studied and I'll think about that in in the talk in terms of the the human capital sort of the economic consequences of the skills that are acquired in schools and also the ideological component of what studied you know I'll run out of time so quickly but but just to say a last thing I'll probably accelerate a little bit but I think just to get us on the same page in terms of the big ideas is important you know educational institutions historically and and to some extent today have been especially important because so often particular professions particular positions are linked to schools to particular educational qualification so whether these are government positions the ability to take civil service exams whether they're positions in a church hierarchy there there are many different official privileges that are reserved to people who attend particular schools that's true since the very first university in medieval Europe which granted graduates the right to teach across Europe but that was unique to the universities so let me give you you know a little bit of general background on on the approach to sort of link the stories that I'll tell you to my training I guess and to give a sense of you know why economists might be interesting storytellers to listen to the the first sort of economic perspective that that I bring to these stories is thinking about like a political economy framework for evaluating the policy choices that face elites elites will support particular educational institutions particularly educational content but not others you know in in ways that are predictable they want to maintain their consumption and their income they want to maintain their status they don't want to be undermined okay the the important punchline of this sort of framework though that I want to emphasize and that will become clearer as I talk through these these different stories is that it's not always the case that elites policy decisions hurt everyone else that's certainly not the case so elites want to live in a society that that thrives that is economically vibrant that is to the benefit often of the elites let me add that I often am talking about the elites as if they're one homogeneous group that's certainly not the case in general and and you'll see that you know you can imagine that the sorts of trade-offs that elites face are often trade-offs that people within the elite will disagree upon among themselves and and that's very important I'm not going to talk about that a lot but I think it's super super important to keep in mind but you know in general what what I want to have in mind is elites choosing policies those policies will inevitably affect society at large and those choices that that preserve elites incomes or maximize their incomes while still preserving their status may end up benefiting a lot of people as elites support investments that that elites want people to make to make society richer on the other hand there may be certain investments that threaten the elite and that would have benefited Society and those those sorts of investments may be prevented by elites okay so you know the lessons from history you'll you'll see clearly enough you know are exciting because by looking across time and across nations one sees really dramatic variation in educational content in educational institutions in the types of choices that elites or the ruling class face and looking back across time you know I think we'll give the social scientists a chance to study sort of the really momentous changes or the really momentous choices that can tell us something about how elite policy choices in the realm of education let's say shape long run growth that's not always easy to find and these lessons indicate that that I think the choices that elites make have massive social consequences across a range of outcomes I I need to move I it so so you know I I promise I won't skip over anything too important but but I I want to tell you at least a little bit about all the cases so so history gives us a unique perspective economics also gives us unique tools so in addition to sort of a political economy framework the the tools of economics that I will generally apply our empirical tools for trying to answer questions of causality history also helps because history gives us as I'll talk about in a minute things that look like natural experiments that allow us to answer questions in in a credible way but much of what I'll be talking about will be data heavy I try to give you sort of quantitative evidence on these causal questions and the challenge to any sort of causal question if I give you an association between let's say the existence of universities like Bologna and economic outcomes like urbanization I might try to tell you that universities and the legal training at the University of Bologna promoted urbanization and the commercial revolution in Europe but the skeptic and economists are always skeptics will always say well what else might be going on that would drive that association besides the causal claim that that's being made and the the way to really push your point has to be identifying some source of variation let's say an educational content and trying to find that right sort of variation that looks like an experiment to allow you to make a credible claim so while a lot of what I do will look a lot like what what many economists are doing I think one interesting twist to the the Gary Becker sort of inspired human capital literature is that while while a lot of empirical work on education and human capital focuses on quantities like years of schooling a lot of what I'll be talking about is is that the content of schooling and in the structure of educational institutions which i think is a bit of a different angle okay so let's see the time okay 30 minutes this is this is crazy my co-authors if they get a chance to watch this will be laughing at me I'm gonna try to go through several cases that illustrate I I think the the interesting policy choices that elites have faced in history and illustrate I think their their most important consequences I will run through these cases so try not to read the slides too much I promise I'll tell you everything important and if you want to return to a case we can do that in the question and answer session so starting with medieval Europe which which is very very close to this place actually so when when da Vedic Antonia my co-author and I began studying medieval Europe what what we cared about was this this interesting rise of a new institution the university that didn't really exist anywhere else and didn't really exist in Europe until the Middle Ages and just when the first universities arise Roman law is readapted and that that's no coincidence the first universities as I'll talk about we're focused on teaching Roman law in bologna now what you also observe at this time is what's called the European commercial revolution and what we began to think about was well what what did this introduction of Roman law teaching a new form of human capital what did the introduction or the establishment of a university a new form of institution sort of look like in political economy terms and what were the consequences and and as I laid out new educational content might be something that's welcomed by the elite in the case of Roman law elites might view it as something that will increase urbanization and allow them to tax trade for example on the other hand it might be threatening and we want to think a little bit about these consequences and and so we started by studying medieval universities I'll talk a little bit about other cases as well so Roman law and medieval universities you know so so the first thing that I just want to lay out for you is is that Roman law was was something new it was a new form of human capital training in Roman law in places like Bologna was something that arose maybe in the 10th century in the 11th century first in in just schools with with particular legal scholars attracting students before universities were even formed and this human capital was really valuable so scholars attracted students because students could put their training to use so you know these are some quotes that essentially say Roman law in fields like contracts Roman law that helped to adjudicate disputes among different Lords was useful for people to know they could earn a living by studying with with legal scholars and and this was something new that arose because Europe was experiencing something new is experiencing new levels of trade new levels of urbanization beginning in in the 10th century so how do elites respond elites are often conservative as one might expect and the school in Bologna that's attracting all of these these students has initially met with suspicion so the church is afraid to lose a monopoly on education and initially prohibits study of civil law actually in prohibits study in in secular of secular teaching citizens in in the the cities that held these these schools which were attracting people from from all over Europe were taking advantage of these students and trying to extract ransoms for debts that their compatriots owed to local citizens so there were town-gown conflicts the church was suspicious of the new legal training and one can imagine that these sorts of schools would be shut down I think that's not you know an impossible counterfactual but in fact it's not what occurs so so Frederick Barbarossa gives privileges to the students in Bologna these students organize themselves as a corporation the first University it gets rights and what happens is that Pope's emperors secular lords begin to realize that the human capital that's being produced in the universities is not producing a threat but in fact is producing human capital that can be extremely useful in their organization so people who study law Bologna study both civil law and canon law and these people trained in law form the church hierarchy which which allows the church to become sort of the first modern organization that looks like a state and these students go into secular administrations as well so the policy response essentially becomes a very positive one where we're Lords and the Pope essentially subsidized training in this new form of study by giving students rights by hiring these students and and guaranteeing them positions many of the first colleges in universities across Europe were funded by different church orders so there were subsidies that were put in place by the ruling class to try to develop a new form of human capital which would support the ruling class and you can see the support in in the careers of bologna z' graduates so this is over the first 500 years of its existence a very large fraction went into church administration or at a public administration half of the people that we find careers for go into these administrative jobs they become part of the ruling class they support the existing ruling class and you know then the question is well what does it mean sort of for everyone else and you know what Da Vida and I noticed was we think you know in in the correlations it seems and and also sort of thinking about the history it seems like this may have been a great thing Europe is this you know very fragmented place legally and and in terms of jurisdictions in the Middle Ages traditional legal systems weren't very well equipped to support trade and having a Roman legal system could have reduced the uncertainty of exchange having trained lawyers work as administrators but also working in lower level positions like procurator's and notaries and in roles like that people with some exposure to Roman law could really help resolve uncertainty and trade and support commercial activity for everyone so you know is that the case well you can see an association between this commercial revolution and the rise of universities so here are data collected by others young lion vincent and alto bering on urbanization rates which climb from the the 900s into into the year 1400 into the 15th century manuscripts sort of another measure of of people's income also climbing and universities also climbing at this time so two things to take away from this picture Europe experiences an incredibly important change in the late Middle Ages it becomes commercially active it becomes urbanized the second thing is that there's an association with universities now those are important takeaways but this graph also leaves a bunch of questions so one is you know what can we possibly say when we look at urbanization rates every century that's not a lot of data to any correlation between universities and urbanization rates is almost certainly at least in part driven in the opposite direction of the argument we want to make higher levels of urbanization is exactly what leads to a demand for university trained lawyers so Davide and I have have a paper that's on my website and on his website that shows several important facts about this this commercial activity and important facts about the outcome of this elite decision to support investments in in Roman law training in the Middle Ages so first we collect a lot of data on the establishment of markets in cities in the Holy Roman Empire these data allow us to measure economic activity in a nice wave you know in we just have much more data than people have had in the past and we're gonna test for the the impact of universities and legal institutions on new market establishments so how do we do that well we don't have a real experiment in opening universities but we do have a natural experiment which which we found you know extremely interesting which is the papal schism so before the papal schism as I said I'll cut through the slides I should be fast so before the papal schism the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire have zero universities Prague is is the exception but you know it's think about it as a zero universities German students and faculty are all abroad many of them in France so now suddenly for reasons unrelated to economic activity or some change in the you know the rate of establishment of markets something happens in the church so in 1378 the church elects two popes i don't know how commonly known this is maybe everybody knows this backward and forward here but two popes are elected one goes to Avignon one stays in Rome and different rulers take sides and essentially to cut to the chase the French state and eventually the French universities decide that they are going to align themselves with the French Pope and they essentially expel German students and faculty who are loyal to the Roman Pope so in the early 13 80s you get a wave of students in faculty leaving France and coming into Germany and the Roman Pope opens new universities to take them in so the sort of experiment that we have in mind is before the papal schism things economically speaking would look exactly like things after the papal schism but because of this shock that hits the church you have universities by chance after the schism so that's the sort of experiment that we have in mind we also look at how much access to a university change but but we can get into that later I'll just give you the sort of punchline this is what German university students across time looks like around the time of the schism so 1386 is the the establishment of Heidelberg the first German university and you can see that in 1386 there's a massive increase in the number of German university students so what happens to markets so I'll show you two pictures one picture shows you market establishments across time in places that did not experience any change in distance to university so some places as a result of these new universities have greater access to universities some places have no change in access they were initially close to Prague close to Bologna closer to to Paris and these places that don't get any closer to a university they experience no change in market establishment rates in 1386 on the other hand places that get closer to a university in 1386 experience this positive trend break so it's important to note from from the perspective of economics I have to get moving so I will speak more quickly but what's interesting is that prior to 1386 the places that get closer to a university look a lot like places that didn't get any closer to a university it's only after 1386 that you see this break so to you know wrap up this case study what we observe we would argue is an experiment that puts universities in some places at some moment and those universities we argue through the legal training they provided support the commercial revolution process support market establishment and sort of bringing things back to where we began this policy choice of elites which supported their institution so the church was supported by investments in human capital the existing secular lords were supported by investments in Roman law this also had important consequences for others for all of the merchants for all of the people who were able to move into cities and experience you know this this rapidly changing European economy there were positive spill overs to everyone else so this is one of these nice stories of elites making a decision that benefits everyone I'm gonna jump ahead now so China China is another case of existing elites being faced with a choice of whether to support investments in a new form of human capital so here a little background I think is in order for hundreds of years Chinese elites studied in this classical education system which determined whether an individual got to be a member of the gentry which came with tax exemptions and if they continued to ascend the ladder of the education system in the examination system these Gentry members could gain civil service positions and and get very very rich as well as a lot of status what did this education system look like well students would memorize Confucian classics for many many years memorize commentaries and learn how to write these very very sort of stylized almost poems in order to respond to these exam questions exams weren't really graded on the basis of substance and you know in in the late 19th century you have a little bit of introduction of Western subjects Western science a very little bit but for the most part this seems like a very very abstract liberal arts education you know borderline you know sort of like worthless arguably so it wasn't worthless to the elites the elites began their education as babies that's a baby being held up by his tutor learning his characters and if he succeeded he'd get to wear this nice scholarly hat and wear nice robes so the the point is that that in China almost all of one status almost all of one social mobility opportunities almost all of one's income as a clan if came from this education system that was was based on the classics but in the 19th century after exposure to Western imperialist powers and missionaries Western subjects begin to be introduced slowly in China so just to give you a sense of what we're thinking about mainly what what's interesting I think is a teaching of science and engineering and mathematics which was well advanced well in advance of what China had so the big question facing elites in China to move a little more quickly is is what do you do about you know this this new form of human capital on the one hand Chinese elites faced an enormous amount of pressure in the late 19th century pressure from the the Western powers and from Japan pressures internally in the form of civil war and you know pressures from some reformers internally as well to modernize so there there were many good reasons for the imperial elite to say listen we need Western science we need Western math this is exactly what the Japanese did during the Meiji Restoration much earlier than China did was adopt Western institutions and Western education to try to modernize and become a successful economy on the other hand China was stronger than than Japan in many ways which is a little bit surprising and the Chinese elites tried to maintain their traditional system and one can see why I mean it's it's a huge change to take an education system that shaped your ideology that shaped your culture for a thousand years and say okay we're gonna give that up and start studying Western ideas Western languages Western math so there's some reform as you know a punch line especially in in trying to modernize the military but for the most part the servitors prevailed and and again one can see why so remember that all of the bureaucracy came from this traditional education system all of their legitimacy was based on this education system producing the right leaders for a society in addition and and I think this is important the Ching dynasty was not made up of majority Han Chinese they were outsiders and the way that the Ching Emperor's connected with the Han Chinese was through the traditional Confucian classics in many cases and if the Ching decided that they were going to turn their backs on this traditional Chinese education system the classics one can imagine that they would lose their base so what was the policy choice rather than subsidize modern human capital as Western European elites did they subsidize the traditional education system so you know although they could have adopted Western science in the 1860s like Japan they could have abolished their traditional exams and tested people on Western science instead they maintained their exam system they maintained huge huge economic benefits going to people trained in the traditional system and unsurprisingly investments in traditional education are maintained for another 50 years so what are the consequences well the consequences are in the 19th century China experience is almost no growth in the early 20th century the exams are abolished the Emperor abdicates and China does begin to experience growth is that causal I'm not going to have a great you know experiment for you but there is some evidence that modern education in fact has some causal relationship to economic modernization and in this period so first areas with missionaries even outside of treaty ports more urbanized one of the things that missionaries brought was Western schooling I also have some work looking at the wages and occupations of individuals who are working in a Chinese railroad in the 1920s when you look at these employee records you see that if you were trained in the traditional system you were stuck working as a clerk to get a job working as an engineer as a manager you needed to study in the modern schools so to industrialize China needed modern education it seems and the choices of elites preserved themselves for 450 years maybe but but seemed to have been costly so one more so I will I'll wrap up within within 10 minutes I think which i think is ok great thanks so a couple more things about China so China had had a couple very violent dramatic centuries and I hope China has a much better 21st century than its its 19th and 20th 19 and 20 where we're both awful let's see how the 21st goes so one can continue to study China and continue to study these shocks to institutions so the first one is in the 19th century imperialists arrive and bring Western education now in the 20th century one of the the interesting sort of shocks is going to be shocks that that shape social mobility and shape what what you know the way I'll empirically study this is thinking about status transmission so how successful is a parent in producing a kid who looks like them and this you know as again Tito's essay suggested is sort of the you know one of the the obsessions of the elite everywhere and always so elites always are trying to use the education system to make sure that their kids look like them so I I couldn't resist putting this in I didn't put in anything on Harry Potter but just to bring things to the present for a moment this is just a random New York Times article about preschool admissions in the United States so first there are consultants that will help you in New York get your kid into the right preschool so why does that make sense of course it doesn't make sense but if you're a parent who wants every little bit of advantage for your kid you think 40,000 dollars per year for preschool gets them into the right Elementary School the right elementary school gets them into the right high school the right high school helps them get into Harvard then they get the right job the right networks and you were successful as a parent so I don't know this is Freddy this is one reason you know I think people my age are terrified about raising kids in New York and I think it's it's really a problem okay so let's think about dramatic shocks to this this process of status transmission so elites are going to try to use schools to preserve their kids status and the question is well you know what happens when institutions are radically changed in China's 20th century so what we're going to be able to do using data on children's education and parents education is study the correlation between kids education and parents education where a higher correlation means parents look more like their kids status is being transmitted successfully a lower correlation means there's more mobility parents and kids look less alike and and we're gonna be able to use survey data that exists to study kids who are born and educated under different institutional regimes kids who are born and educated before the Communists take over kids who are born in ajik after the communist takeover but before the economic reforms and then kids who are educated after the reforms so I won't get into too much detail just to give you a sense of the pattern so this is among urban Chinese I should have drawn lines in and this line is kind of confusing the point is that that there is this U shape and the U shape really does correspond to the institutional changes that occurred in China in the 20th century so before Mao took over parents and kids education look very similar after Mao takes over parents and kids look much less similar Mao succeeded in in generating social mobility and and he did that or you know his party did that for a variety of reasons that we can discuss that you know just as a side note this is not just coming from you know Mao destroying Chinese society and making all education levels zero which is one way to create a lot of social mobility this is not to say that everything that Mao did was was good at all but that's not what's happening Mao and the Communist Party built schools they built schools especially in rural areas they educated girls and they gave people access to education who didn't have education in the past and your own educational outcome was less a function of your parents now what happens for the later cohorts cohorts born after 1965 who are educated after the reforms well the the what I think is happening and I'm working on this project still with a co-author is that elites have seen that the returns to education have gone way up in China this is the result of the economic modernization that's occurred and at the same time you know elites have a sense that the traditional ways of insuring their kids status don't exist so what it elites do during the 80 elites made sure that schools were built that sounds a lot like Mao and the Communists but the schools weren't built in areas that were disadvantaged the schools were built in areas that were advantaged actually and you can see this especially in high school and in universities where in China even today not everyone is guaranteed a seat in a high school in rural China you have to take a high school admissions exam and if you fail you're going to the army that's that's pretty frightening at least it would be for me maybe not so much for them but if you're in Beijing everybody has a high school salon that's one level now you look at these elite universities that I mentioned Peking University Ching hua those schools have quotas allocated by province it's not the case that disadvantaged provinces are given a leg up not at all Beijing actually has the most generous quota per student so the educational systems the educational system in China that developed in the 1980s is one that's very biased toward the urban elite and and has led to an increase in status transmission so this is a different data set we can talk more about this if you want patterns are roughly similar okay so I said this let me talk briefly for two minutes about curriculum reform so just you know this is this is one last aspect of why elites care about education I think it's worth studying it's something I've been working on lately so I just wanted to share it and I think the results are really striking and and worth talking about so so curriculum reform in 21st century China so you know as I mentioned one reason elites in the ruling class care about schools is that they want to shape the way people think this is true from Nazi Germany - you know contemporary Hong Kong and China contemporary Japan the contemporary US where people in the middle of the US sometimes don't want their kids to learn about evolution which is is a strange thing so elites politicians governments have for a long time thought about schools is something that would shape the way students see the world but as you can imagine you know based on on the discussion earlier in your own intuition it's very hard to identify the causal effect of school curricula per se so you look at kids who are educated in Nazi Germany and you might see that their attitudes are different from other people now that might be because of the schooling or it might be that younger people during the Third Reich were more impressionable you look at kids in the US who study in schools that don't teach evolution and maybe they're more religious but that might have been you know exactly what was what was changing in their society that led to the elimination of the teaching of evolution in their schools in the first place so what we need is some sort of you know changes in curricula that don't have anything to do with other factors that shape students views so it turns out that there's a nice curriculum reform in China that happened in the past decade that has this sort of flavor of an experiment and I'm not going to get into the details as I click through my slides you'll see that I was overly ambitious but I can talk to you if you're interested later and why this seems like an experiment but the basic idea is sort of the following if you enter high school in one year let's say you're in in Sichuan Province you might have a completely different political science curriculum from people entering high school just the next year so much of your lives will be the same so much of what's changing in Sichuan province will be the same whether you're 14 or 15 years old it's not going to make much of a difference these people look very very similar and sort of that sharp difference in curricula across cohorts is very very nice now we don't just have that in China but because the curriculum was introduced in different provinces in different years you also are able to take those two cohorts that were exposed to different curricula in Sichuan and you can ask well what would the differences in courts have looked like if there was no change in curriculum and because other provinces didn't experience a curriculum change in that year you can look across those cohorts in those other provinces as a sort of comparison group which looks a little bit again like an experiment we can talk more about that but let me just give you the the overview the overview is my co-authors and I looked at many government documents that made it clear that that the state wanted to change people's attitudes and we ran a large survey at Peking University which draws people from every province in China and we have four cohorts worth of students and we can look across cohorts and across provinces and see whether exposure to the new curriculum had impacts on attitudes in the directions that the government wanted so I like this quote I'll just read the first line the politics textbook is the spiritual material that the country provides for students I just I love that that's from an author so here's what the state tried to change these are important attitudes views on democracy and political participation views it so you know that the teaching is on the rule of law in the new curriculum and how the rule of law legitimizes the Chinese government so we look at impacts on trust in government officials and and that seems you know just incredibly important do kids who study this curriculum that talks about the rule of law trust government officials more we talk you know we asked about some other desired ideological changes we can talk about them if you want here's the map showing the variation in in the start dates okay so we ran a survey here's what one of the survey winners gets a nice iPad for participation not everyone got an iPad just just for the record so yeah there's a lot to talk about in this paper that would be fun but but I want to get to your question so what what I'll just tell you is is sort of the following here's the punchline so kids and and we just to be clear we think about these as causal effects because we think we have something like a nice experiment so kids who study under the new curriculum change their beliefs in the direction the government wanted on views on how democratic China is trust in government officials they they have internalized this idea of a the three represents that the Communist Party should represent groups of citizens who traditionally weren't represented and you know this is actually I think also extremely interesting kids who study under the new curriculum are much more skeptical of unconstrained market so as much as we think of China as being this you know wild west of capitalism it really isn't and the ideology that Chinese kids are getting is not capitalism and free markets are good in fact it's very much you know a pro state involvement ideology which which i think is surprising to a lot of people i I was surprised by this seeing it in the tax books and and trying to understand what was happening there but the textbooks had an effect we don't find significant effects on views on minorities or on environmental policy so concluding thoughts and we'll get to your question so you what what I think all of these sort of cases point to is this crucial role that elites the state the ruling class play in in determining what our schools look like and what they teach and inevitably VLE will choose policies that are in their interest or in the interest of some of the elite at least again it's not always harmful but it can be I think to me the policy punchline is you know when we think about changes in schools or changes in human capital in a society and what we want to achieve I think we want to think about what society as a whole would want to achieve what's socially optimal strategically as a policymaker one also needs to think about what the ruling class wants and how the ruling class will respond to any policy change the ruling class will try to maintain its privileges its status its consumption again that's not always going to be a bad thing for your proposed policy or for everyone as a whole but let's say you're in the Middle East and you're trying to move from an oil based economy to a human capital based economy which is something that many Middle Eastern governments are trying to do you want to establish new universities you want to establish a culture of science and innovation that may be very hard if you're displacing traditional elites who have a very different view on what education should look like or what qualifies someone for leadership in a society or what sorts of ideas are acceptable the same sort of thing applies in China where there's an attempt to encourage innovation and creativity but of course that can backfire for the existing elites if it makes people revolutionary so let me leave it at that and I welcome your questions thank you thank you great thank you very much well I'm really impressed you really gave us food for thought appreciate it very much the historical examples and the examples of today so that we can have a better understanding of what's going on in China I propose that we can start with a question I was like to ask a question myself that concerns the social mobility the changing of status my question is maybe it's not directly related with what you said but it's a great question so suppose that let's while they build the schools and the institutions in a certain way that might generate some inequalities in the society so I wonder in the different societies into the Chinese in the US the Italian all the Western societies do you think that we may calculate in economic terms about the cost of inequality which is generated by a school system which is not enhancing equal access to certain schools which may tender to play the game of the elites so this is my first question no please get ready for questions raise your hand and use the microphone since one at a time or collect maybe it's better what was the time one a time okay so let me start with with with this great question so I I think that you know so putting one number on the cost of an unequal school system is of course going to be very hard but you can think about ways to begin to get at this so so how might you get at this well well one thing you can do is look at work that's being done for example on charter schools in the u.s. that go into neighborhood so so the US has an incredibly unequal primary schooling system and and they're their school districts you know including near where I live in San Francisco that are really hopeless this is true in places like New York as well there have been innovations in bringing new types of schools called charter schools into in practice in the u.s. many of these are sort of private non-profit schools that take kids out of the public system but but don't charge them a fee and try to provide a better education than what the terrible public system was providing so now what you might do is you might say okay what what is the waste of human talent that exists when we only have the public system well we can get at that by looking at the introduction of a charter school so imagine looking at sunk so the nice thing about these charter schools is they're often oversubscribed so more people want seats than can get in because the public schools are so bad and so they're often lotteries to determine admission and so you can look at a true causal effect of the charter school on kids outcomes so now imagine so these charter schools are pretty new but you could imagine looking across you know in in ten years and 15 years look at the economic contributions let's say to GDP or you know more ambitiously looking at the number of patents produced by kids who go into a charter school just by chance because of a lottery versus kids who just because of a lottery didn't go to a charter school and we're stuck in our terrible system so now imagine if you see you know one patent per hundred kids who get into a charter school and you can imagine you know again like that you you need to make assumptions it's very hard but but to begin to get at this you know every patent that you observe is is wasted human capital and and that might be one approach to thinking about you know beginning to aggregate up to how much we're losing by basically putting kids in schools that aren't teaching them that lead them to drop out now you know as an aside a huge component of what costs us in America as a society by having an unequal school system is of course the indirect costs via the criminal justice system and I think that that's something else worth discussing is this link between bad schools for for the lower end of society in terms of income and then inevitably higher levels of participation in criminal activity also let's say an illegal system that isn't particularly kind to many of these people and then immense costs in managing a huge criminal justice system prison system and things like that so you know there there are estimates already in the impact of the impact so a professor at Harvard named David Deming has done some work looking at the impact of going to a better school on on whether you commit crime and there is an impact and I think that that's that's yet another component of the massive cost of an unequal education system what about innovation in school matters and tools do they use these tools in China's secondary school - technology app students to have the performances in Chinese school so yeah that's that's a great question so I think sadly Chinese high schools especially at the high end are very focused on training students to tests in some ways China in in many ways has institutions today that really echo the past the Communist Party looks a little bit like an imperial sort of dynasty and exams still shape the lives of China's young to to a great degree so I think one of China's biggest human capital challenges is trying to shift from schools that teach students how to be great memorizing certain techniques especially you know there are many sort of kids who are brilliant at math but they're brilliant at applying techniques that exist the challenge is to move from there to training kids to think critically and creatively and to generate new ideas and I think that you know in in some places like in Shanghai the education system is a little more independent and and I think they're more successful at that but but that is a big challenge that you hear people talking about in China a lot so I would say a couple things so one is you know what are they doing now it seems much less focused on innovation but I think that's a recognized need the second part is you know how can innovation sort of shape the classroom and I think that there it's a bit of an open question I mean I I would say you know innovation can mean exposure to different ways of doing things and and that that typically seems good to me so it should go against the sort of brainwashing that you get from curricula to be exposed to ideas from from outside your school and when you see what kids in let's say the u.s. are doing I think the u.s. is actually very good at training kids to criticize what they're taught and and if Chinese kids you know could use technology to see a little bit of what an American classroom looks like that might be a very good thing I have a curiosity more than a question I was impressed by preschool in New York very expensive how many people attend this classroom and that means that selection of elites starts at four or five years of age thank you yeah I'm so I'm fascinated by this as well yeah it's incredible so I I don't have numbers how prevalent so I'll tell you I'll tell you this so I live in San Francisco which is a much less competitive place than New York across a range of dimensions including I think in how competitive parents are in raising their children but I will tell you I know exactly - two families raising children in San Francisco and one of them went through a long preschool application process in San Francisco to get their kid into the right preschool for the right Elementary School for the right you know so on and so forth so you know this is an incredibly small sample but it's it's you know suggestive let me also say that you know at a broader level this isn't at the preschool level but at the level of elementary school so starting at age six or so it's very well known I I don't have kids yet but all of my colleagues who tell me okay when when you have kids you know the expectation is you leave San Francisco and the reason that you leave San Francisco you know if you're if you're a professor and not you know a rich Silicon Valley millionaire is that the public schools are terrible in San Francisco and you want to select into at the very least a good public school district so a lot of American sorting is not so much in paying $40,000 a year for preschool that's private but it's effectively paying maybe more than forty thousand dollars a year by buying an expensive house in the right neighborhood so so you know one one example of this that that I think captures this so you know Oakland California is a very diverse and in some ways lovely city east of San Francisco and you know it's it's a place where where many people connected to the University of California live and work but when they have kids of a certain age they either move to another city or there's there's you know I think a very you know telling sort of Enclave that's surrounded entirely by Oakland but it's a city called Piedmont which has its own schools you know I'm sure house prices are you know much much more expensive than in Oakland so this is how you pay for your schools they're not private they're public but you're paying for them anyway and you're getting this sort of selection of a sort of elite and that is you know something that almost all of my colleagues just take for granted and and that's something it's it's not so where I grew up in in Wisconsin which is which is in another part of the country where there's a little bit less of this sorting and and it happens a little bit later but you know I think people people think about it so Tito's essay talked about about three and four-year-olds in Paris I think and I think to talk about three and four-year-olds I think you're talking about the very very elite in very competitive cities like Paris New York and I guess San Francisco and yeah I mean I think that may be the way of the world I I have no idea what the return to this is if any my guess is that it's it's probably very close to zero to be honest I mean so you know just some some related evidence on this question so people looked at the economic returns to going to maybe Harvard or maybe a range of schools that look like Harvard looking at people who are admitted to those schools and don't go versus people who go and their earnings I think are identical now that's not to say that there isn't a return to going to Harvard we could talk about about why that that might be and why it may not show up in the data that people saw but at the very least I think on average preschool attended is probably it ends up being associated with outcomes that are good but that's not because the preschool mattered it's because there were parents who cared a lot about their kids invested in their kids and so on so I don't think it's a causal effect and I I wonder if there isn't some harm done to kids whose parents are you know driving them you know to think about Harvard from age three I could support cerebral for pellizzoni depression or whatever you lay at it took you said in the u.s. in California and other states public schools are very bad is that because the teachings all the teachers are not good or simply because state does not believe so the government does not believe in public schools and they do invest this is discriminating so the rich can enroll students to private schools and those who are not wealthy they are cut out so the the first thing I want to say so the u.s. is more complicated than just having bad public schools I think the interesting thing about the u.s. is that in some cases the public schools are incredibly good so some of the best schools in New York City are competitive public schools but but more than that so that that requires taking an exam so so here's here's how you get a good education in the u.s. there are a few routes one is you're born to rich parents wherever you live they'll buy you a good education another is you're born to rich parents they move you to a place with great public schools where all the parents are rich they basically keep poor people out via housing prices and this looks a lot like many of the suburbs of New York City the suburbs of Boston you know Piedmont which I just mentioned these are very very expensive places to live they have incredibly good public schools I mean these are public schools that are better than than most private schools that you could find anywhere in the US another route is there are still some places that have good public schools and a broad base of students so you know it seems like this is sometimes university towns with politically liberal people who want to live in economically mixed areas and want to support their public schools so you know I grew up in a university town and almost no one went to private school there were a few public high schools that were at least pretty good and and I think that this is this is often true of university towns you know and and it again it's complicated so so some of these schools might get resources that end up discriminating against the poor within the school so I know at my high school and I think at many other public high schools that are very mixed you will have classes for the really really good students that are great classes the teachers are fantastic but most of the students who are who are very very poor end up not being able to take those classes because they start out being disadvantaged and they never get into the right track so you know when when you look at the u.s. system I think it's it's actually surprisingly diverse I think that that the tragedy of the u.s. system is really in certain districts especially in inner cities if you have a community that's almost entirely poor then that district isn't going to be able to afford good schools if you have a district that is large fraction poor let's say and you know moderate fraction rich as in San Francisco San Francisco's an incredibly rich City but all of the parents send their kids to private school it's just a bad equilibria my think but at that point the public schools lose support they lose funding as you said they aren't able to attract the best teachers and it ends up being a failed system so I think the the hope for the u.s. is that you know perhaps some of these charter type schools that are moving in that will you know sort of shake up education and say you know we will promise teachers higher salaries and those salaries don't come from these rich people who aren't willing to pay taxes they come from the rich people who are willing to make charitable contributions and there are many like that so so Mark Zuckerberg you know this is not to a charter school but Mark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook recently announced that he was giving 120 million dollars to San Francisco public schools actually so so there there are you know there are paths forward where schools eventually are able to afford the best teachers are able to provide environments that are safe but for now their districts in San Francisco or schools in San Francisco in Oakland near San Francisco that are pretty hopeless and any parent who wants their kid to succeed ends up you know ensuring that the school remains hopeless by pulling their kid out so it's the the tragedy of sorts is if every parent of us you know who wanted their kid to be successful in Oakland in San Francisco instead of going to Piedmont instead of going to private schools I think if they put their kids in the public school systems I think the public school systems might actually get pretty good that might lead to two other problems and and in other tensions but yeah anyway it's it's interesting and I think it is challenging Lima patents limited approach I have the impression that children were industrial products to be adjusted to the material needs of the society instead of concentrating on philosophy and so on the point taken I accept that so I would say the the patents and earnings approach is a very very narrow way to measure the consequences of a school and the contribution of a school to society I think it's it's one way but but it speaks to a particular question maybe a income lost or human capital defined in a narrow way lost so I think you're absolutely right and this goes back to you know the the 19th century China case that I discussed that you know China might modernize and and train engineers and train people in Western science and build railroads but if the cost is the loss of their traditional culture it's not obvious that that's a trade-off worth making from a social perspective that is very very hard to put a price on and so no I think you're right I think that you know in in some sense you know other measures would be good complement so you know do you turn to crime you know that that might be useful I think another one might be you know do you end up using sort of drugs to you know not not you know illegal drugs but but you use some sort of pharmaceutical to maintain mood or something like that you have mood disorders you have so illogical disorders so a school they yeah but but again I mean the goal of school might be to shape you to fit into your society if you have a mood disorder it might be that you hate the society so it's it is complicated I mean I think that yes what you would ideally like is some measure of kids being able to sort of fulfill their ambitions whatever those ambitions are and those ambitions may have nothing to do with earnings you know I think you know one way to get it that would be to run a standard happiness survey economists don't love those because they're they're sometimes hard to interpret but anyway yeah I mean I guess the point is very well taken that I think that when we do think about these schools you know I I think it is certainly certainly important to think about what types of human beings they produce as well as how productive that's good a fairy salon a pickle and not a sequester and let me quote something of interest for Italy our country is investing more in culture and education regardless of the outcome have less corruption for petty crime also that could be a good reason to design the school system not only concentrating on immediate economic outcomes but also indirect outcome but an atmosphere which is corrupted thus generating growth the China curriculum change that I studied that had consequences I think are a little bit frightening that suggests that the ruling class can convince students that they should be trusted that that's a little bit scary but the bright side of that is we actually see that students under the new curriculum having learned about the rule of law having learned about different ways of monitoring officials and how important it is to adhere to the rule of law view corruption is less legitimate and so so the nice thing about brainwashing is it sometimes brainwashing can do some social good and I think this is one case yeah and I I don't know if that you know is sort of thinking about the state it as as you know something that that's you know controlling our kids but I think it's some level we do want our kids controlled like we give the state the right to control our kids we would do it ourselves as parents I think if we could we try to shape our kids values but we give our kids to the state to teach our kids in schools because we hope you know I hope we trust our state at least a little bit so when there's a disc between the parents and the state that's teaching the kids obviously there there can be a role for brainwashing that's truly frightening to the extent that the parents give the state the authority to instill values and their kids that the parents want to instill in their kids then absolutely this is sort of the the silver lining of our results I think Kumud Ito respondent oh Allah demand Azula is complicated I studied different examples and I noted often so the elite the move from one education system to the other for example okay public schools at the time of high school with better students there is a nice case in Brazil in Italy a university cannot choose its students well in Brazil and they support innovation very much to have very severe and graduated tests they have high Ivy League with very difficult exams and the other universities have tests of different severity I am a professor in Campinas the son of the children of the wealthy do not pass the exam he accepts the children of the wealthy who not passed the exam they offer psychological support they complete the undergrad angered Red Cross they are better than the students of the public university and then they enter the PhD courses so some who failed psychological support and receive a public scholarship to attend the PhD courses well we have many questions but either we collect other two questions and then we conclude because our time is over you are not making a distinction between humanistic education and technical and scientific education and I think there is a difference in the way both types of curricula can enhance economical development that's what I want to ask you final question because our time is over the problems for the ruling I think there are three of them recruitment we should be very rigorous and selective the training which should be continues and challenging and the assessment I well in Italy as you might well know the public administration the one the teachers the schools and the ruling class and I was part of that so I know it for many reasons or not I never assessed with a number of negative consequences we will say the other schools who trained to innovation and so on but are those who are supposed to teach and innovate are trained by persons who are not assist so can you comment on that please be fearsome that'd be nasty okay so it's time to answer no one more question sure okay FINA well well this view is very mechanic not well on the one hand it shows trust in education I mean but we never know will be the outcome there are many variables so the picture is so complex because human beings are unpredictable so it would be cautious in making an analysis you are convinced from a will go to be and that's for sure well we in the Constitution the good public system was invasion up to the highest levels but that was supposed to be public a critical one and not based on brain washing I mean because we're sending a charge of psychologist is a sort of brainwashing well I cannot upset that from a we will do necessarily to be oh and it's so stupid that they are there to foresee such a boring life that they replicate themselves at live later are in such a predicament in Italy that I'm afraid they will never be able to reach the levels of a little intellectual adequacy there is something which is not working Italy just think of the schools in Norwich Amelia which was a very good one but much more humanistic approach to people who are considered human is kid adventurers and the same goes with people nobody believes in the idea that you put a funnel on the head of a person you put something in a very good thing comes out as if I studied the yellow pages in Beijing and there are lots of private schools of American module and the people were not satisfied with public schools we suggested to read a book by professor cobalt II from treinta that I mean people are paid if a certain model is applied this is done by the International Monetary Fund everywhere and you speak with people that would speak as if you were in the Netherlands as for the assessment who is going to assess the Assessors who is going to assess those to assess the people who indeed believe in everything which is told to them who is going to assess the Assessors political Giovanni you know so every unit in Delhi so I think I am supposed to start with humanistic versus technical education maybe that was the second question actually did I miss one oh yes yes yes yes sorry sorry sorry yeah yeah okay okay okay okay okay yes different systems Brazil so so this is this is super interesting so you know it relates a little bit to the question about Italy you know I I don't have a single answer in terms of you know here is the right way to think about you know the best system of Education from you know grade one to college or university you know I I will say you know so it's so coupling so one I can tell you a little bit about you know my my experience in the US which is that I think our universities are probably the the strongest schools that we have you know relative to the rest of the world I think that's right I think our high schools are so-so relative to the rest of the world but our universities are really world-class and they are very very competitive it's also the case that the the leadership of those universities whether you think about you know administrative leadership but especially sort of faculty leadership is sort of brutally assessed so you know if you're a professor at the University of California the assessment that you face and in terms of the quality of your research is incredibly rigorous and and this is of course true when you're a junior faculty person trying to get tenure but it's true for first your faculty as well so you know it you know I'm an economist I have I have my biases I think some you know incentives to achieve can be crucial for making people perform and I think that selecting out people who are lazy or who aren't qualified for their job is crucial for any organization to be successful so it is the case that organizations make mistakes in promotion whether it's a civil service whether it's a university when civil services lock people in and they can't get fired they're never assessed that can be a problem if those people choose no longer to perform and that's certainly true at universities and sort of you know assessment I think is important incentives are important so so going back to the Brazil question I think it's clear that the competitive schools versus uncompetitive schools can have different consequences I think that that example is is a fantastic one of the broader point of my discussion which is the ruling class responds so if the ruling class can't get you know qualification one that makes them look like they're legitimate and and qualified for a professional career then they will you know generate some other qualification which will make their kids look competitive or eventually even be competitive so you know on the one hand I'm not at all surprised that elites went a different route I think this happens in the US as well that you know to the to some extent we have meritocratic systems in place but there are all sorts of elite attempts to get around the meritocracy and you know maybe the most obvious one is you know our universities are you know somewhat meritocratic in their admissions but certainly if you donate five million dollars to Yale or to Harvard you're gonna get your kid into Yale or Harvard left maybe ten million I don't know but you know that's I have no idea actually but I I'm sure there's some price let's put it that way so so the elite find a way it's it's you know I think interesting that these elite schools that seem to start with you know in quotes were students end up you know I think achieving better outcomes than the schools that start with better students and then you you have to start wondering you know exactly what's happening there and again you need to start thinking about elite incentive so so one thing that you might expect suppose the the private schools that the elites go to have more money than you know suddenly those schools might might end up being appealing to some of the the non elite and the elite may want to start giving them scholarships I mean this is this is how American universities became great they began as places that were private where elites paid a ton of money to go and now you know fifty percent of kids who go to Harvard get financial aid and a you know some fraction of them have their entire schooling paid for the reason is that you know as was mentioned you know these different stages of what the the elite want they want some you know very very rigorous selection into their group so if there's a really bright poor kid who's gonna make the elite stronger more successful is going to be a great connection they want that kid to go to Harvard with their with their son they're willing to put you know that's where their ten million dollars goes basically you give 10 million get your you're less qualified kid into Harvard that 10 million brings a more qualified kid who couldn't afford it and so that's that's sort of the the the way I think American higher educational institutions work there's clearly some openness which is a great thing it's clearly something that's great for people who are not in the ruling class it also benefits to some extent the people who are in the ruling class and and so I think that whole process in Brazil is extremely interesting so now humanistic versus technical I think they're both very important I think that I focused on technical education a little bit here in the China case but you you know I don't know how you view Roman law exactly to some extent it's humanistic to some extent it's very professional I guess you know I focused on education that changes economic outcome so that's related to the the comment made earlier about how I'd measure the impact of schools you know that's that's mainly a function of of my discipline I guess I think that you know I want to judge schools only on on their economic consequences you know then there's a question does humanistic education lead to good economic outcomes and I mean there I I will say you know I I'm sure that that you know liberal arts education studying English studying philosophy studying logic you know has to be extremely valuable so I think that you know some of the the brightest kids I've ever met who are economists in a relatively mathematical discipline our kids who at least had some training reading like learning how to how to read text learning how to think critically about ideas learning how to write effectively because sort of the logic of an argument that that one has to you know make coherent in writing is something that you know informs models and informs hypothesis testing so you know I I'm very very much in favor of humanistic education I think you know my guess is that it does have market returns I mean you know you see a little bit of that I think so in the US the the closest sort of economic outcome to a true sort of humanistic education you look at kids who go to law school so you know if you study English Literature at a good American College and do well you can get into Harvard Law School and you know after your first six months at Harvard Law School you might have a New York firm you know paying you a hundred thousand dollars a year or you know promising you with a hundred thousand dollars a year not not because of you know technical training but because you've shown that you know how to think and you know how to analyze text again that's like you know bringing it into economic terms but I think humanistic education obviously is is is valuable I think it's a sort of you know to go back to Becker it's a sort of general human capital if you know how to read write think argue that's something that you can apply as an economist as a sociologist as an entrepreneur as a lawyer it's general human capital you know I coming you know to close the the point on on you know the ruling class is multiple objectives and this process and the lack of assessment so I love this this breakdown of these three sort of stages in the process of ruling class production you know I think the lack of assessment is is ridiculous if you want me to come down hard on it I mean I think you know the point of you know no assessment again view through the perspective of while the slides aren't there now I'm just they're viewed through the perspective of that guy of those slides is that somebody is probably being made better off by the lack of assessments and if you want to put assessments in place which I think could have you know certainly a high high value you know if you want to bring in fresh human capital these expats who go to the US and study and stay there you want them to come back to Italy you wanted to leave London and come back to Italy you need to give them you know an environment where their ability is is rewarded and where you give them a social network and a work environment where they're you know complimented by high skilled high energy people and that means you need to get people who aren't working hard out and I think the problem is and you know this is raised by the last point who assesses the Assessors I think you know all of these arguments that I made like can you know they're complicated because there are layers to all of this so you know you you think to yourself okay we have a lack of assessment because the existing you lead the existing bureaucrats don't want to be assessed they want to keep their jobs without having to worry too much okay so let's introduce assessments and maybe you get a politician with the energy to introduce some assessments but now you have to worry that the people who shape the assessments are going to be influenced by the existing bureaucrats so you you really need some sort of you know sharp shock and and so you know the one example of that in in the the many pictures I showed you I think is sort of you know China at the time of Mao where you have you know elites transmitting their status at a high level and then it drops radically I think you know my impression is that that's because the existing elites before Mao took power didn't really have an opportunity to adjust their investments and their kids didn't really have a chance to shape policy so you really need to take it out of the existing elites han so you know I I think assessment is super super important but you know as the other comment you know suggested you know who will assess the Assessors who will shape the assessment that's a political economy problem in itself and you need someone external let's say or someone with energy and and someone who's willing to pay a cost so that's another thing if someone has the courage to pay the cost then they'll they can do it but the point is the elite the rule you know ruling class in this in this particular sense will fight them and they need to be fought gratia gratia you need to look at thank you very much goodbye yeah