Human Capital and Growth : The Recovered Role of Education Systems
Recent empirical studies question conventional wisdom about the importance of education to growth. These results partly reflect how international differences in the quality of education systems--defined by the systems' ability to produce one m...
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Language: | English en_US |
Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2001/07/1490187/human-capital-growth-recovered-role-education-systems http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19583 |
Summary: | Recent empirical studies question
conventional wisdom about the importance of education to
growth. These results partly reflect how international
differences in the quality of education systems--defined by
the systems' ability to produce one marginal unit of
productive human capital--are not taken into account. The
author estimates neoclassical growth models on panel data in
which the elasticity of human capital depends stochastically
on different characteristics of the education system. Among
characteristics that explain differences in quality are
education infrastructure, the initial endowment of human
capital, and the ability to distribute educational services
equally among potential students. Giving priority to primary
education for all rather than secondary education to a few
is more likely to foster growth (for the same fiscal
burden). But parallel actions are also probably needed--for
example, promoting institutions that motivate skilled
workers to spend time on growth-promoting activities and
encouraging the inflow of foreign technologies to maximize
the social return to public investment in education. |
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