The growth literature has not yet established how data on education should be introduced in theories involving human capital. Early work used enrolment rates as a proxy of human capital whereas more recently it has utilized measures of average educational attainment taking advantage of new data sets. This paper examines alternative specifications of human capital that may match up with the existing data on education. First, we present a standard neoclassical two-sector growth model that adopts a human capital specification proposed in recent papers. In this model the fraction of individual's time endowment in school is viewed as an investment rate. We show that the optimally chosen educational attainment predicted by the calibrated model is very high and does not correspond to the data. Next, we consider two extensions of the basic model: (a) allow for different elasticities of substitution between skilled and unskilled labor, (b) introduce work experience. We find that neither of the two extensions are able to generate plausible predictions. Finally, we propose an alternative specification of human capital based on a law of motion of educational attainment that successfully matches up with the data.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie) in its series Working Papers. Serie AD with number
2002-23.
Find related papers by JEL classification: O15 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration O41 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - One, Two, and Multisector Growth Models
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Solow, Robert M., 1999.
"Neoclassical growth theory,"
Handbook of Macroeconomics,
in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 9, pages 637-667
Elsevier.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)