Human capital, technological spillovers and development across OECD countries

Abstract

In this paper, we study the relationship between the level of development of an economy and returns to different levels of education for the panel of OECD countries over the 1965-2004 period, in a club convergence framework. The connection between growth and human capital measures of primary, secondary and tertiary education in a multiple-club spatial convergence model with non linearities and spatial dependence is considered. By decomposing total schooling into its three constituent parts, we are able to evaluate their impact on regional growth without imposing homogeneous returns from each level of education. We contribute to the identification of two regimes for OECD countries, each characterized by different returns on physical and human capital accumulation and technological spillovers. We also find that the non-monotonic pattern of convergence is strongly influenced by human capital stocks and technology diffusion process is stronger in the club less close to the technological frontier.