Human capital and productivity growth in Italian regional economies. A sectoral analysis

This paper examines the relationship between human capital and productivity growth with reference to Italian regions, testing the neoclassical and the Schumpeterian hypotheses by means of sectoral data. The former stresses the accumulation of human capital as a determinant of growth, while the latter emphasizes the role of its stock. In particular we expect the Schumpeterian approach to be more relevant in the industrial sector where the most important growth determinant is innovation. The results do not confirm our expectations. In the industrial sector the neoclassical hypothesis is clearly rejected by the data. Separating the technical component of human capital provides some support to the Schumpeterian hypothesis, however results are not robust to changes in model specification. In the service sector a positive effect of human capital accumulation has been found for the whole sector but its explanatory power decreases considerably in the marketable services branch.