Human capital, growth and convergence traps: implications from a cross-country analysis

This article, adapted from Tamura’s theoretical proposition, empirically investigates capital convergence in three country groups belonging to significantly different development categories: G7, developed and developing. Human capital evaluation, in this context, goes beyond enrolment and/or attainment rates. In addition to enrolments and government spending, alternative factors determining human capital effectiveness synthesize an idea of enhanced human capital proxy. Empirical results indicate moderate evidence of convergence among the three-country groups when conventional variables are included. The convergence pictureʺ is quite different when additional variables are empirically examined, implying the existence of a convergence trapʺ caused by initial endowments on human capital