Learning by Doing, Overinvestment and the Erosion Effectt of R&D on Human Capital Accumulation

Abstract

There is an “erosion effect” of R&D on human capital accumulation. This paper develops an economic growth model with endogenous technological progress and human capital accumulation, and emphasizes there are two characterizations in R&D process, which are that R&D process requires human capital investment and R&D of new technologies is obtained on the basis of learning by doing, and then we characterize the “erosion effect” which implies a negative externality of R&D in human capital accumulation. By comparing decentralized economy and centralized economy, we draw a conclusion that monopoly markup, overinvestment of physical capital and human capital interact with “erosion effect”, and would decrease human capital accumulation rate and economic growth rate.