Heterogeneous Human Capital, Trade and Growth

Distribution differences in human capital matter for a country’s growth and trade. While the existing literature considers only the diversity difference in talent distribution, we argue that the kurtosis difference is also an important factor. In a two-sector equilibrium growth model, where the production function is supermodular for the consumption-good sector and submodular for the R&D sector, we prove that the diversity effect and kurtosis effect are opposite to each other. A country endowed with more diverse but leptokurtic talent distribution may have lower growth rate and import submodular goods, opposite to the conventional result from considering only the diversity difference.