Human Capital Data: Evidence and Suggestions from Italian Time Series (1881-1993 (original) (raw)
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This paper explores the impact of human capital on the productivity, income and life expectancy growth rates of the Italian regions, from 1891 to 2001, by way of conditional regression models. After comparing different indicators, human capital is approximated through a composite indicator of literacy and schooling, named ‘education’; however, changes on the way human capital is measured do not affect the results of the model. The impact of human capital on growth was not uniform over time, varying of intensity and significance according to both the dependant variable and the historical periods. While negligible for life expectancy, in both the cases of income and productivity, it was relevant during the 1891-1911 years, decisive in the 1911-1951 period; statistically not significant in the 1951-1971 interval, again relevant during the 1971-2001 period. Generally speaking the expected role of human capital on the performance of the Italian regions is confirmed, and so its negative impact on Southern Italy disappointing growth, also on the long run. Yet human capital was really decisive only when internal mobility of labour and capital and international openness were both at a minimum, during the 1911-1951 years. In the remaining periods other factors – such as overseas migration during the 1891-1911 years – seem to have counterbalanced or even reversed its impact.
Human capital and economic growth. An exploration into the Italian regions (1891-2001)
During the last fifty years human capital has won a prominent candidature as one of the main sources of economic growth, although its relevance has not always been proven. 1 Few years after the notion of human capital had made its appearance in the economic literature (Schultz 1960, Becker 1964), economic historians began to investigate the relation between the spread of mass education and the development of the Western world (Cipolla 1969).
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This paper reviews the evolution of educational institutions and outcomes over the 150 years since Italy's unification, and discusses their interaction with national and regional growth patterns. While initial educational conditions contributed to differentiate across regions the early industrial take off in the late 19th century, and formal education does not appear to have played a major role in the
2005
Paper prepared for the 45th Congress of the European Regional Science Association Since Solow's (1957) contribution, human capital has a central role in the debate on economic growth as a leading long period development factor. If from a theoretical point of view the role of human capital on economic growth both directly and throughout its use in R&D activities is fully accepted, from an empirical perspective the results are much more controversial, strictly depending on the quality of data. A recent analysis by Aghion and Cohen (2004) put in evidence that high-level human capital has a positive effect on economic performance only if a country is close to the technological frontier: countries that are far from this frontier, specialised in traditional sectors, can growth, almost in the short run, even exploiting medium-level human capital. This analysis lead to consider the link between human capital and growth with a greater detail, trying to disclose the effect of different human capitals in a country, such as Italy, traditionally oriented toward a low/medium technology production. Using, beyond the usual proxies of human capital, some measures of its quality and of its interrelation with R&D sector, we would like to give a new contribution to the analysis of regional growth in Italy in the period 1980-2001. The panel approach, here adopted, allows us to take account of the temporal variability and to check for omitted variable specific for regions and persistent over time.
2005
Since Solow’s (1957) contribution, human capital has a central role in the debate on economic growth as a leading long period development factor. If from a theoretical point of view the role of human capital on economic growth both directly and throughout its use in R&D activities is fully accepted, from an empirical perspective the results are much more controversial, strictly depending on the quality of data. A recent analysis by Aghion and Cohen (2004) put in evidence that high-level human capital has a positive effect on economic performance only if a country is close to the technological frontier: countries that are far from this frontier, specialised in traditional sectors, can growth, almost in the short run, even exploiting medium-level human capital. This analysis lead to consider the link between human capital and growth with a greater detail, trying to disclose the effect of different human capitals in a country, such as Italy, traditionally oriented toward a low/medium t...
Process of accumulation of Italian human capital
Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 2008
Human capital (HC), from the economical point of view, is defined as a stock variable that represents the capacity of an individual generated by investment in education and work experience to produce a sustained flow of income throughout the life span. The proposed approaches that consider HC as unidimensional latent variable are recent and start from the economic theory specified in Dagum's recursive model [Dagum, C., 1994. Human capital, income and wealth distribution models and their applications to the USA. In: Proceedings of the American Statistical Association, pp. 253-258] which purports to explain the determination and the distribution of income, wealth, debt and HC. The aim of the present article is to generalize the previous approaches to the case of human capital conceived as a latent variable, composed by two main dimensions (Education HC and Work experience HC), underlying the process of determination of earned and capital income. The model is applied to the estimate of Italian household human capital in 2000 and compared with the US household human capital.
Human Capital and Urban Growth in Italy, 1981-2001
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This paper analyses the contribution of human capital, measured using the share of residents holding a college degree, to urban growth, gauged by the growth in employment, between 1981 and 2001. According to our estimates, starting with a ten per cent higher share of college-educated residents was associated with a higher growth in employment in the 0.5-2.2 per cent range. These results hold when considering both the municipal and the local labour market (LLM) levels, and they are robust to a wide set of urban characteristics. Our findings are confirmed using a measure of education dating back to 1931 as an instrument for human capital. Furthermore, we exploit a spatial localization model with human capital premiums to disentangle the estimated effect into two components related to productivity and life quality respectively. We find that productivity contributed to more than 60 per cent of the effect of human capital on urban growth at municipal level, and to over 90 per cent at the...
Journal of Economic Surveys, 2010
This paper focuses on the estimation of the latent variable human capital (HC) at disaggregated level (worker) by available routinely institutional data flows. In particular we utilize the Lombardy region administrative archive 'Employment Centers of the Province of Milan', collecting information about careers of workers in the private sector of the Milan area, and administrative flows collecting mandatory workers' individual income tax returns, filed with the National Internal Revenue Service. First, we propose and empirically estimate HC scores in a static (referred to 2004) framework, by means of a realistic measurement model within causal relationships among endogenous and exogenous (investment) HC indicators. Furthermore, the model also specifies a set of (concomitant) indicators that, not belonging to HC investment indicators, have causal impact on endogenous variables and on HC scores, too. Second, we propose a longitudinal analysis (period 2000-2004) aimed to investigate how workers' earned income growth rates vary over workers' educational levels and other personal characteristics. The empirical results of both analyses confirm the characteristics of the Italian job market, denoted by marked inequalities, and knowledge regarding the process of school to work transition, characterized by a weak incidence of education on longitudinal trajectories of earned income.