Human Capital Composition and Economic Growth at the Regional Level

International audienceIn this paper we analyze the impact of human capital composition on regional economic catch-up for Spain over the period 1960-1997. Empirical evidence shows that human capital has a non-linear impact on convergence at both NUTS2 and NUTS3 geographical disaggregation levels. Tertiary education drives regional catch-up while the accumulation of non-technical education slows down this convergence. When we control for the development stage of the regions, strong complementarities seem to arise between different types of skills. Closer to the frontier, tertiary education and secondary/vocational training drive the convergence process while the impact of intermediate education is weak for regions at lower development stages. Results are robust to different specifications and when we tackle endogeneity by applying efficient two-step system-GMM estimators and correcting for small sample biases