The Impact of Human Capital on Regional Labor Productivity in Europe

Abstract

Economists have long stressed the importance of human capital to the process of economic growth. However, recent cross-country studies have shown that economic growth appears to be unrelated to increases in human capital (Griliches 2000). Benhabib and Spiegel (1994), for example, have found only a weak correlation between growth and increases in human capital, measured in terms of educational attainment. Pritchett (2001) has arrived at similar results using a different dataset and more extensive robustness testing. These findings are in contrast to a great deal of evidence indicating high returns to human capital investments in both developing and developed countries (Temple 1999).KeywordsHuman CapitalLabor ProductivitySpatial Weight MatrixHuman Capital VariableSpatial Durbin ModelThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.