The growth of potential GDP in Mexico is not fast enough to narrow the income gap with other OECD countries at a sufficient pace. The persistent weakness in human capital development contributes to this situation. In particular, Mexicans spend comparatively few years in formal education, and the...

This paper presents empirical estimates of human-capital augmented growth equations for a panel of 21 OECD countries over the period 1971-98. It uses an improved dataset on human capital and a novel econometric technique that reconciles growth model assumptions with the needs of panel data...

An effective system of education and training is important for both social and economic reasons. Its role in the Polish economy is to provide the current and future labour force with skills to facilitate both continuing productivity growth and reallocation of resources as structural adjustment...

This paper examines various efficiency and equity aspects related to the skill acquisition of young people and older adults. The analysis suggests that such human capital investment is associated with significant labour-market gains for individuals, including higher post-tax earnings and better...

This paper develops and applies a simple “conditional growth” framework to make long-term GDP projections for the world economy, taking as a starting point recent empirical evidence about the importance of total factor productivity and human capital in explaining current cross-country...

The lack of human capital in Portugal has become a key obstacle to higher growth. This paper discusses the performance of education and training services in Portugal and shows that improvements are needed to narrow the significant human capital gap with other OECD countries. Despite progress in...

This paper reviews Iceland’s performance in skills accumulation against the backdrop of a rapidly changing economic environment and discusses directions for further improvements. Since the late 1990s, the government has considerably raised expenditure on education, which is now among the...

Brazil's main challenge in innovation policy is to encourage the business sector to engage in productivity-enhancing innovative activities. At 1% of GDP, R&D spending (both public and private) is comparatively low by OECD standards and is carried out predominantly by the government. Most...

The average educational attainment of US students is weak by international comparison. For example, mean results of PISA test scores are below the OECD average. This is despite substantial resources devoted to the schooling system. One partial explanation for this is that academic standards,...

This paper discusses growth performance in the OECD countries over the past two decades. Special attention is given to developments in labour productivity, allowing for human capital accumulation, and multifactor productivity (MFP), allowing for changes in the composition and quality of physical...