Human capital spillovers, productivity and regional convergence in Spain

Abstract

This paper analyses the differential impact of human capital, in terms of different levels of schooling, on regional productivity and convergence. The potential existence of geographical spillovers of human capital is also considered by applying spatial panel data techniques. The empirical analysis of Spanish provinces between 1980 and 2007 confirms the positive impact of human capital on regional productivity and convergence, but reveals no evidence of any positive geographical spillovers of human capital. In fact, in some specifications the spatial lag presented by tertiary studies has a negative effect on the variables under consideration.

Education or Creativity: What Matters Most for Economic Performance?

“…The other type of data available to measure the regional endowment of human capital is educational attainment. The influence of education has been well documented in nationwide studies (Mankiw, Romer, and Weil 1992; Benhabib and Spiegel 1994) and at the regional level (see, among many others, Rauch 1993 for the United States; Di Liberto 2008 for Italy; and Ramos, Suriñach, and Artís 2010 for Spain). Moreover, this issue is becoming even more relevant, since the differences in human capital endowments are increasing at the regional level because of local agglomeration effects (Berry and Glaeser 2005).…”

Externalities of Colleagues’ Human Capital Accumulation and Individual Wages: Empirical Evidence from the Malaysian Service Sector

“…This probably occurs due to the sharing of information, skills and knowledge among the workers -the strong would help the weak and the skilled would help the less skilled, as well as the workers" spirit of cooperation. In this way, the knowledge and skills acquired could be used by the workers for other tasks, without having to attend other courses, like what has been discussed in previous studies (Idson, 1995;Idson & Kahane, 2000;Moretti, 2004;Fu, 2007;Rosenthal & Strange, 2008;Ramos, Suriñach, & Artís, 2010). Perhaps it is not too much to state that the colleagues" education may possibly complement the individual"s existing education.…”

Development, contributions and trends in regional studies in Spain: An overview

“…All this illustrates not just an expansion of the search for factors to explain the disparities, but also analyses including innovations in terms of analytical techniques. From this point of view, some contributions must be specially considered: Ríos () what drives unemployment disparities in European regions; Ramos, Suriñach, and Artís () linked human capital spillovers with regional productivity and convergence; Castells‐Quintana and Royuela () provided an excellent analysis of the connections between agglomeration, inequality and economic growth and Márquez, Ramajo, and Hewings () proposed a simple but innovative way to measure the role of geographical location in economic inequality. The novelty is that they decomposed global inequality into its within‐country and between‐country components, assessing which part of these components could be related to neighbourhood factors.…”