This volume introduces the economics as a foundational discipline in education. It provides economists and non-economists with an accessible grounding in the key concepts and recent developments in the field. The book deals with such themes as human capital theory and its alternatives, the monetary and non-monetary benefits of education, the education production function, equity in education, and the evaluation of education policies. In this volume, students, researchers and policymakers will find an entry point into the way economists think about educational questions and readers will deepen their understanding of the field with state-of-the-art reviews of the main topics that are at the heart of the economist of education today. About the series: Education, as an academic field taught at universities around the world, emerged from a range of older foundational disciplines. The series comprises six volumes, each covering one of the foundational disciplines of philosophy, history, sociology, policy studies, economics and law. This is the first reference work to provide an authoritative and up-to-date account of all six disciplines, showing how each field's ideas, methods, theories and approaches can contribute to research and practice in education today. The six volumes cover the same set of key topics within education, which also form the chapter titles: - Mapping the Field - Purposes of Education - Curriculum - Schools and Education Systems - Learning and Human Development - Teaching and Teacher Education - Assessment and Evaluation This structure allows readers to study the volumes in isolation, by discipline, or laterally, by topic, and facilitates a comparative, thematic reading of chapters across the volumes. Throughout the series, attention is paid to how the disciplines comprising the educational foundations speak to social justice concerns such as gender and racial equality.