Education and natural resources in economic development: Thailand compared with Japan and Korea

In this study, we compare among Thailand, Japan and Korea in terms of their educational and economic developments. We hypothesize that Thailand's slower economic progress has been due to its slower educational development induced by abundant land resource. Our regression analysis using pooled time-series data of these countries confirms the negative effect of land endowment on educational investment. Land endowment also has a negative effect on agricultural intensification and industrialization whereas the educational stock has a positive effect. These imply that Thailand failed to effectively mobilize resource rent in the vent-for-surplus development stage for preparing conditions of modern development.