The Effect of Educational Expenditure on Economic Productivity: A Comparison of the Situations in Iran, India, Japan, Germany, and Australia

The Effect of Educational Expenditure on Economic Productivity: A Comparison of the Situations in Iran, India, Japan, Germany, and Australia A. Abbaaspoor, Ph.D. E. Jahaangard, Ph.D. E. Misaaghifar Different countries may differ in their educational systems, but they are the same as far as their educational systems interacting with their socio-economic systems.  From a systemic perspective, evaluation research on the functioning of these systems is necessary. In economics, education is considered to be a sector in its own right and one way of looking at it is through the give and take model in order to determine the mutual impact of different sectors. The present research has looked at the educational investment and its impact on both the national and sectorial economies in 5 different countries. To do this data from Iran in 2006, India in 2004, Germany, Japan, and Australia in 2005 were used and forward and backward indices, both direct and indirect, along with indices of dispersion were calculated. Data analysis reveals that both Germany and Australia have the highest inter-sectorial interaction, whereas Iran has the highest dispersion and sensitivity indices. Key words: educational expenditures, input-output analysis, socio-economic systems, Iran