The Role of Human Capital Accumulation for Economic Growth in East Asian countries

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the difference in human capital accumulation can explain the non-convergent feature in East Asian countries. The paper first presents the cross country evidence that growth rates in East Asian countries had little correlation with the starting level of income for the last few decades. In addition, the paper shows that this non-convergent result does not change even if the regressions allow the difference in school-enrollment rates. Noting that government expenditure on education can improve the quality of education, the paper then demonstrates that government expenditure on education played a special role for East Asian miraculous economic growth for the last few decades. The paper also shows that exports played a special role in explaining the convergence hypothesis in East Asian countries.