Human Capital and Economic Growth: Operationalising Growth Theory, with Special Reference to the Netherlands in the 19th Century"

This paper presents new estimates of the stock of human capital in the Netherlands between 1800 and 1913. The estimates of human capital are derived from data on primary, secondary and tertiary schooling. It is argued that the measure of human capital presented here is conceptually better than alternative measures, such as enrollment rates or literacy rates. The estimates were used in a growth accounting exercise employing an approximation of a translog production function with human capital as an additional factor of production. The results suggest that economic growth in the Netherlands during the 19th century was to a large extent based on the accumulation of fixed tangible capital, with human capital playing a less important role.