Arbeitspapier

Specifying Human Capital: A Review, Some Extensions, and Development Effects

A review of the measures of the stock of human capital used in empirical growth research reveals that human capital is mostly poorly proxied. The simple use of the most common proxy, average years of schooling of the working-age population, misspecifies the relationship between education and the stock of human capital. Based on human capital theory, the specification of human capital should be extended to allow for decreasing returns to education and for differences in the quality of a year of education. Cross-country differences in qualityadjusted human capital can account for about half the world-wide dispersion of levels of economic development and for virtually all the development differences across OECD countries.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Series: Kiel Working Paper ; No. 1007

Classification
Wirtschaft
Subject
human capital measurement
years of schooling
Mincer specification
educational quality
development accounting
Humankapital
Messung
Bildungsniveau
Bildungsertrag
Kognition
Entwicklungskonvergenz
Schätzung
Theorie
Welt
OECD-Staaten

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Wößmann, Ludger
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
Kiel Institute of World Economics (IfW)
(where)
Kiel
(when)
2000

Handle
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET

Data provider

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Object type

  • Arbeitspapier

Associated

  • Wößmann, Ludger
  • Kiel Institute of World Economics (IfW)

Time of origin

  • 2000

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