How Important are Education, Human Capital and Knowledge for Economic Growth and Development?

Abstract or Introduction

In his speech at the Inaugural Convention of the African Federation of Human Resource Management Association in Botswana, Professor David Abulai (2008) stated that quality and quantity of human capital is becoming increasingly evident for the economic development of nations in today’s knowledge era. In fact the world of today is influenced by steady technological and scientific progress; by means of these new developments the socio-economic conditions in which people live are increasingly improving. Nevertheless a big part of the world is still lagging behind and social and economic distinctions still exist and developing countries are trying to catch up.

Professor Abulai (2008) argued that the key to this catching up in development is the population itself, which has to be educated, healthy and qualified in order to deal with new scientific and technological inventions and to exploit this new opportunities in the best possible way. The aim of this paper will be in the first part to analyze the impact of education, human capital and knowledge for economic growth and development.

In the second part of this paper the incorporation of human capital into endogenous growth models will be examined, focusing on the two main branches of growth analysis pioneered by Romer (1990) and Lucas (1988).