Should-Read: N. Gregory Mankiw, David Romer, and David Weil (1992): A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth

Should-Read: An oldy now, but a very goody: The treatment of human capital in this paper is inadequate: the benefits of human capital are private to the learner, which I think is wrong, and teachers in rich countries are 50 times as good at getting human capital into the brains of learners as are teachers in poor countries, which I think is wrong. Human capital largely acts as a force multiplier for physical capital. But the underlying lesson is very good: the Solow model can fit quite well if you assume capital production function parameters of a half or more: N. Gregory Mankiw, David Romer, and David Weil (1992): A CONTRIBUTION TO THE EMPIRICS OF ECONOMIC GROWTH: “This paper examines whether the Solow growth model is consistent with the international variation in the standard of living…

…It shows that an augmented Solow model that includes accumulation of human as well as physical capital provides an excellent description of the cross-country data. The paper also examines the implications of the Solow model for convergence in standards of living, that is, for whether poor countries tend to grow faster than rich countries. The evidence indicates that, holding population growth and capital accumulation constant, countries converge at about the rate the augmented Solow model predicts…