Does Education Matter for Economic Growth?

Michael Delgado, Daniel Henderson () and Christopher Parmeter
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Michael Delgado: Department of Economics, State University of New York at Binghamton

No 2011-13, Working Papers from University of Miami, Department of Economics

Abstract: Empirical economic research typically uses education as a proxy for human capital. However, research aimed at validating the inclusion of education measures in growth regressions has yet to reach a consensus, often finding that the sign and significance of education depends on the sample of observations or the specification of the model. The goal of this paper is to reconcile the conflicting empirical evidence and validate (or invalidate) the inclusion of education in international growth regressions by providing a rigorous and systematic search for significance of education. Using methods which are largely immune to model misspecification, we examine six of the most comprehensive education databases in an attempt to identify a robust empirical link between mean years of schooling and economic growth rates. Contrary to a few recent papers that have identified significant nonlinearities between education and growth, our results show that the inclusion of mean years of schooling in growth regressions is not warranted.

Keywords: Human Capital; Education; Irrelevant Variables; Least-Squares Cross-Validation; Nonparametric (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 I20 J24 O10 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 94 pages
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-fdg and nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Forthcoming: Under Review

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https://www.herbert.miami.edu/_assets/files/repec/wp2011-13.pdf First version, 2011 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does Education Matter for Economic Growth? (2014)
Working Paper: Does Education Matter for Economic Growth? (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mia:wpaper:2011-13

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