نقش سرمایه انسانی در توسعه اقتصادی چین : بررسی و شواهد جدید

We carefully utilize empirical methods and measurement, and find that the effect of human capital on China's economic growth may be indirect through physical capital investment. This result is different than that found for OECD countries and has not been suggested by previous studies. In addition, in determining physical capital investment, workers with college education play a more significant role than those with primary and secondary education, suggesting the possibility of capital-skill complementarity. This finding has implications for China's future regional growth inequality: the inequality may increase rather than decrease, because physical capital investment continues to accumulate faster in the eastern area where the human capital stock is larger and thus leads to greater economic growth in the east.

Close-to-double-digit growth in the last several decades has gained China the praise of growth miracle. Amid the acclaim, there have been some concerns. One concern is that China's economic growth is largely labor intensive, featuring high fixed capital investment and energy consumption (Arayama and Miyoshi, 2004, Chow, 1993, International Energy Agency, IEA, 2005 and Yusuf, 1994).1 This growth pattern faces a limit. Alternatively, growth driven by human capital has potential to be substantial and sustainable due to the increase in productivity, technological innovation and diffusion (Aghion and Howitt, 1998, Lucas, 1988, Nelson and Phelps, 1966 and Romer, 1990). Another concern is, although China achieved fast economic development, the growth rates of different regions vary notably, so that the regional development gap has not been reduced but even enlarged. The large differences across regions may be caused by different regional natural conditions, government policies, and fixed capital investment including foreign direct investment. Different human capital levels across regions may also be an important contributor to regional development inequality. Our study pertains to the two aforementioned concerns. Using provincial data from 1996 to 2004, our initial findings show an insignificant effect of human capital and a sizeable and significant effect of fixed capital investment on economic development. We also find evidence of convergence in growth rates across regions conditional on the inclusion of human capital and physical capital. These findings are consistent with empirical evidence found by previous research which suggests that China's economic growth is mostly driven by fixed capital investment and that regional development inequality is attributable to different physical capital investment amounts across regions. However, our further analysis shows that fixed assets investment is endogenous as 84% of variation in the fixed assets investment across provinces may be explained by the provincial initial human capital stock and wealth level. Moreover, college or above level education is a more important determinant of physical capital investment decisions than primary or secondary education. After correcting for endogeneity using the two-stage least square method, we find that the effect of fixed capital investment on the growth rate is no longer significant. These new findings have two potentially important implications: 1) human capital has already played a significant role in China's economic development in recent years, and the role of human capital may be indirect by impacting physical capital investment. 2) China's regional growth inequality may increase rather than decrease in the future. This is because eastern areas traditionally have a large stock of college-educated workers and college-educated workforce is more likely to attract physical capital investment than primary and secondary education. Thus, rather than flow to the west voluntarily, physical capital investment will continue to build up in the eastern area where the human capital stock is larger and cause the eastern area to grow faster than the central and western areas. The rest of paper is organized as follows: in Section 2 we review previous empirical evidence regarding the role of human capital in China's economic development. Section 3 describes data and variables. 4, 5 and 6 presents sequentially the estimates of growth models; the impact of human capital on fixed assets investment; the 2SLS estimates; and the contribution of government and social education expenditure to workers' educational attainment. A summary and conclusion is contained in Section 8.

China's rapid economic growth in the last several decades has drawn great research interests from all over the world. Researchers have examined the pattern and sources of China's economic growth, and generally found that physical capital investment was the main engine of growth and that growth rates of different regions converged after taking into consideration of different physical capital investment amounts. However, the question remains whether economic growth in China is sustainable. Believing human capital is the key to the long-run economic growth, we focus on finding empirical evidence of the role of human capital in China's economic development in recent years, so that our findings may have implications for future development policies. We do not find strong evidence that workers' human capital in a province directly contributes to provincial economic growth. However, a province's initial stock of human capital has a large and significant impact on the later fixed assets accumulation. In particular, provincial workforce tertiary educational attainment is a more dominant factor of physical capital investment than primary or secondary education. After correcting for endogeneity, fixed assets investment is no longer significant in the growth equation. These results suggest that production in the advanced eastern area of China might have shown some degree of capital-skill complementarity in recent years, as higher education appears to be a more important determinant of fixed assets investment than primary and secondary education. On the other hand, this finding raises the concern that inland provinces may not be able to catch up with eastern provinces quickly and easily. If labor and capital are substitutes, as classical production theories assumed, the marginal return to capital would decrease in the eastern region as economy advances and capital accumulates. Subsequently, capital will flow to the inland where labor is cheaper and the return to capital is higher, and will boost economic growth of inland provinces. By the working of this market mechanism, the gap between eastern and western areas would reduce, which requires no intervention from government to direct investment or redistribute wealth. However, with capital and skill complementary, physical capital investment will continue to accumulate in the eastern region because of the higher human capital of workforce and the greater initial wealth. This will, in turn, accelerate economic growth in the eastern region and widen the gap between eastern and western provinces. Based on our findings about the role of human capital, inland provinces may enhance workers' educational attainment to attract physical capital investment and boost economic growth. We investigate the effect of provincial government and social education expenditure on workers' educational attainment. We find that education expenditure could increase the percentage of workers with primary and secondary education but does not significantly raise the percentage of workers with college or above educational attainment. More effective policies need to be considered to enhance workers' tertiary educational attainment.