Human Capital And Growth: New Evidences From African Data
Abstract
Economic theory long acknowledged a positive relation between human capital and economic growth (Smith, 1776; Becker, 1964), which was nevertheless called into question in the late 1990s (Caselli et al. 1996; Pritchett, 2001). The two primary criticisms evoked were the failure to consider diminishing returns to education and qualitative aspects of the stock of human capital. This work aims to redress inadequacies in the literature related to the usual proxy of human capital by advancing a composite indicator of human capital (PCA). This indicator allows for an integration of the qualitative aspects in question and uses the indicator of the stock of human capital (Mincer, 1974) to take diminishing returns into consideration. Adopting the methodology developed by Islam (1995) allows for the impact of human capital to become positive once again in the process of economic growth. The data also reveal a conditional convergence process for the 22 African countries considered over the period 1970 to 2000.Download Info
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Paper provided by Departement d'Economique de la Faculte d'administration à l'Universite de Sherbrooke in its series Cahiers de recherche with number 09-24.
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Length: 26 pages
Date of creation: 11 Dec 2009
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Handle: RePEc:shr:wpaper:09-24
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Keywords: Economic growth; human capital; convergence; Africa;Find related papers by JEL classification:
- O18 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
- O47 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Measurement of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
- O55 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Africa
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-AFR-2009-12-19 (Africa)
- NEP-ALL-2009-12-19 (All new papers)
- NEP-DEV-2009-12-19 (Development)
- NEP-FDG-2009-12-19 (Financial Development & Growth)
- NEP-HRM-2009-12-19 (Human Capital & Human Resource Management)
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