The Effect of Education and Health as Fundamentals of Human Capital on Global Competition: A Panel Data Analysis on OECD Countries

Abstract

The aim of the current study is to analyze the effect of education and health as the main elements of human capital on global competition in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries using the Granger Panel Causality Test. Accordingly, in the application part of the study, with the data obtained from the World Economic Forum (WEF), the World Bank (WB), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) databases, a panel data set was established for 18 OECD countries for which healthy data could be reached for the period of 2004-2018. As a result of the analysis, a causality relationship was determined between each variable representing education and health as the basic elements of human capital and the global competition for short term. When the results of the Westerlund (2007) panel cointegration test were examined, it was seen that there is a long-term relationship between the Global Competitiveness Index (gci) variable and all the other variables except for variables h1 and h2.