Un modèle de croissance cumulative étendu á l’éducation: une validation empirique pour la région asiatique[A model of cumulative growth extended to education: an empirical assessment for the Asian region]

This paper puts forward an extended model of cumulative growth in which the effects of education and catch-up are integrated, following the Kaldorian ideas of increasing returns of scale and endogenous technical progress. Based on recent theoretical developments, this model allows for examining several cumulative forces that interact with the effect of catching-up and leads to determining whether the final outcome refers to convergence or divergence in productivity levels, which depends on the combination of theses forces at work and their relative power. Applied to a defined Asian region, we derive a simultaneous equations system from the structural Kaldorian model. Thus, the empirical results show that lagged economies with a large stock of human capital can experiment higher rhythm of growth and expect to converge to the leading ones. Such findings seem to be robust enough to make us believe that these extensions proposed to the canonical kaldorian model are relevant in characterizing the Asian growth and contribute to a better understanding of the inclusion of education in promoting growth.