The Impact of Education and R&D Investment on Regional Economic Growth

Youngjin Woo, Euijune Kim and Jaewon Lim
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Youngjin Woo: Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Korea
Euijune Kim: Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Korea
Jaewon Lim: School of Public Policy and Leadership, Greenspun College of Urban Affairs, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV 89154, USA

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 5, 1-18

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of education and R&D investment on regional economic growth in South Korea. We develop a simultaneous model of production, human capital accumulation, migration, population and physical capital investment of two regions: the Seoul Metropolitan Area and the rest of Korea. We decompose the regional growth path into a quality path and a quantity path to identify how regional economies grow and run simulations to evaluate alternative policies in terms of effectiveness and adaptability. The impact of education and R&D investment on regional growth in the rest of Korea is only 22.3% of that in the Seoul Metropolitan Area due to lower elasticity values of young in-migrants with respect to the investment in the rest of Korea. An enhanced efficiency of regional human capital accumulation is effective and adaptable to alleviate regional economic disparity.

Keywords: education and R&D investment; human capital; brain drain; migration; regional economic divergence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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