Human capital, investment in technology, and economic complexity

• Ano de defesa: 2019
• Autor(a) principal: Leite, Deyvid William
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de Viçosa
• Palavras-chave em Português: Exportação; Capital humano; Economia; Tecnologia; Investimentos; Crescimento e Desenvolvimento Econômico
• Link de acesso: https://locus.ufv.br//handle/123456789/26588

This investigation aims to explain the relationship between productive structure, exported products, human capital, and investment in technology at national level. An export sophistication index is used as a proxy for productive structure. The sophistication of exports is called economic complexity and this is used as an adequate measure of per capita income growth. Our yearly based dataset included 98 countries from 1996 to 2015. The results indicate a positive impact of the quantity and the quality of human capital on economic complexity. PISA surveys, the qualitative measure of human capital, showed that the higher percentiles of PISA scores had larger and significant effects on complexity. The influence of human capital on economic complexity decreases as education rises, yielding larger effects in countries with a low level of human capital. Investment in technology and trade openness presented positive and significant effects on economic complexity. We concluded that investments in human capital and technology should be promoted, especially where human capital is low.