Friday, March 25, 2011

Human Capital and Growth

If you're looking for an example of the role of human capital on growth and the production function, look no farther than this article from today's edition of The Wall Street Journal. (Subscriber content at this writing but put the story title in your browser and you should be able to find an ungated version.) The story is about Portugal and the low level of education in that country. As you would expect, it has a significant impact on growth and standard of living.

The video below is from the story and explains some of the institutional aspects of the problem. And as we understand, you can change the law but changing culture and tradition can take a while.



I think this would make a great example for that production function discussion. Please share your thoughts.

1 comment:

Mattia Poletti (Rebel Ekonomist) said...

I'm from Italy and I can say that the situation is more or less the same even here.

Now national our problem is concentrated in the university: students who decide to continue their studies are not so much.

We have even a problem in the south of Italy, more similar to Portugal. In the south part, children and teenagers don't (or can't) study fro a lot of problems...like Mafia..