This article presents new international estimates of human capital for the period 1970–2003. The new latent index is used to re-examine the Benhabib and Spiegel (2005) model of technology diffusion in a horse-race with the competing indicators of Barro and Lee (2010) and Hanushek and Wößmann...

This paper develops a new latent index of human capital identified as valuable skills for seventy countries for the period 1970-2003. The index is compared to existing measures of human capital in assessing the Benhabib and Spiegel (2005) model of logistic technology diffusion. The study...

Lanjouw and Schankerman (2004) proposed that patent quality is a key driver of R&D productivity but did not find supportive evidence for pharmaceuticals. This study revisits this hypothesis using OECD data for the period 1980-2000. It extends the literature in three ways: it develops new R&D...