Inequality and growth: the dual role of human capital in development

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Eicher, TS; García-Peñalosa, C
• 署名单位: University of Washington; University of Washington Seattle; Aix-Marseille Universite; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/S0304-3878(01)00160-2
• 发表日期: 2001
• 页码: 173-197
• 关键词: wage inequality; Skill-biased technical change; threshold externalities

摘要

To examine how human capital accumulation influences both economic growth and income inequality, we carefully endogenize the demand and supply of skills. We explicitly introduce the costs and externalities in education, and examine how both relate to learning-by-doing and R&D intensity. In addition, we endogenize the determinants of the skill-bias of labor demand: the complementarity between technology and skilled and unskilled labor. Our results identify parameters that are central to the evolution of inequality during the development process. We characterise development thresholds when countries switch endogenously from pure learning to deliberate R&D, and we show that technical change can generate multiple steady states that are consistent with the cross-country data on inequality and skill-premia. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.