Human Capital in Growth Regressions: How Much Difference Does Data Quality Make? An Update and Further Results

Angel de La Fuente () and Rafael Domenech

No 3587, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We construct estimates of educational attainment for a sample of OECD countries using previously unexploited sources. We follow a heuristic approach to obtain plausible time profiles for attainment levels by removing sharp breaks in the data that seem to reflect changes in classification criteria. We then construct indicators of the information content of our series and a number of previously available data sets and examine their performance in several growth specifications. We find a clear positive correlation between data quality and the size and significance of human capital coefficients in growth regressions. Using an extension of the classical errors in variables model, we construct a set of meta-estimates of the coefficient of years of schooling in an aggregate Cobb-Douglas production function. Our results suggest that, after correcting for measurement error bias, the value of this parameter is well above 0.50.

Keywords: Human capital; Growth; Measurement error (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 O30 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (56)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP3587 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Human capital in growth regressions: how much difference does data quality make? An update and further results (2002)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:3587

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP3587

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().