Catch me if you learn: Development-specific Education and Economic Growth

TitleCatch me if you learn: Development-specific Education and Economic Growth
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2018
AuthorsCerina, F, Manca, F
JournalMacroeconomic Dynamics
Volume22
Issue6
Pagination1652-1694
Abstract

This paper presents a theoretical and empirical investigation of the relationship between human capital composition and economic growth. In the theoretical analysis, we allow for nonconstant returns to scale in technological activities. Differently from previous literature, our results show that, under broad and plausible model parameterizations, the marginal growth effect of skilled workers is increasing with the distance to the frontier for sufficiently poor countries while it is decreasing (in agreement with the existing literature) only for countries close to the technological frontier. Our empirical analysis provides robust evidence for this theoretical prediction by using a 10-year panel of 85 countries for the years in between 1960 and 2000, as well as by using the System Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM) technique to address the problem of endogeneity. Results are robust to different proxies of human capital and different specifications.

URLhttps://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/macroeconomic-dynamics/article/catch-me-if-you-learn-development-specific-education-and-economic-growth/914547ECAAD38720BC94C4CB45512F35
DOI10.1017/S1365100516000857
Keywordsgrowth, human capital, imitation, innovation, skilled, technological frontier, unskilled