This paper offers a thesis as to why the US overtook the UK and other European countries in the 20th century in both aggregate and per-capita GDP, as a case study of recent models of endogenous growth where human capital is the "engine of growth". The conjecture is that the ascendancy of the US as an economic superpower owes in large measure to its relatively faster human capital formation. Whether the thesis has legs to stand on is assessed through stylized facts indicating that the US led other OECD countries in schooling attainments per adult population over the 20 century, especially at the secondary and tertiary levels. While human capital is viewed as the direct facilitator of growth, the underlying factors driving the US ascendancy are linked to the superior returns the political-economic system in the US has so far offered individual human capital attainments, both home-produced and imported.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
12868.
Length: Date of creation: Jan 2007 Date of revision: Publication status: published as "The Mystery of Human Capital as Engine of Growth, or Why the US Became the Economic Superpower in the Twentieth Century." In The Mystery of Capital and the Construction of Social Reality, edited by Barry Smith, David Mark, and Isaac Ehrlich. Chicago: Open Court, 2008. Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12868
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Find related papers by JEL classification: H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education N1 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Growth and Fluctuations N3 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Income, and Wealth O0 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - General O4 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity
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