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Distinguishing Between the Effects of Primary and Post‐primary Education on Economic Growth
Author(s) -
Papageorgiou Chris
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
review of development economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.531
H-Index - 50
eISSN - 1467-9361
pISSN - 1363-6669
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9361.00213
Subject(s) - human capital , economics , imitation , production (economics) , regression , capital (architecture) , macroeconomics , classical economics , monetary economics , labour economics , economic growth , psychology , social psychology , history , archaeology , psychoanalysis
The paper follows Benhabib and Spiegel ( Journal of Monetary Economics , Vol. 34, 1994:143–73) in examining the effect of human capital accumulation on economic growth. The paper is innovative in two ways. First, it takes the R&D‐based models more seriously. This delivers more structural specifications in which human capital affects growth as an input of final output and as a catalyst of technological innovation and imitation. Second, owing to data availability it is possible to disaggregate human capital and assign different roles to primary and post‐primary education. Regression estimates obtained from these alternative specifications suggest that the relative contribution of human capital to technology adoption and final output production vary by country wealth. More importantly, regression estimates suggest that primary education contributes mainly to production of final output, whereas post‐primary education contributes mainly to innovation and imitation of technology.