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    Was Higher Education a Major Channel Through Which the US Became an Economic Superpower in the 20th Century?

    Adam Cook; Isaac Ehrlich | March 2018
    Abstract
    This paper offers a thesis for why the United States (US) overtook the United Kingdom (UK) and other European countries in the 20th century in both aggregate and per capita GDP as a case study of recent models of endogenous growth, where “human capital” is the engine of growth. By human capital we mean an intangible asset, best thought of as a stock of embodied and disembodied knowledge comprising education, information, entrepreneurship, and productive and innovative skills, which is formed through investments in schooling, job training, and health as well as through research and development projects and informal knowledge transfers (cf. Ehrlich and Murphy 2007). The conjecture is that the ascendancy of the US as an economic superpower in the 20th century owes considerably to its faster human capital formation relative to that of the UK and “old Europe.” This paper assesses whether the thesis has legs to stand on through both stylized facts and a supplementary quasi-experimental empirical analysis. The stylized facts indicate that the US led other major developed countries in schooling attainments per adult population member, beginning in the latter part of the 19th century and lasting throughout the 20th century, especially at the secondary and tertiary levels. The quasi-experimental analysis constitutes the first attempt to test the hypothesis that the US’s ascendancy to a major economic power stems largely from the impact of the first Morrill Act of 1862, which launched the public higher education movement in the US through the establishment of land grant colleges and universities across the nation during the latter part of the 19th century. The higher education movement appears to have spearheaded a higher long-term rate of growth in per capita income in the US relative to the UK and other major European countries.
    Citation
    Adam Cook; Isaac Ehrlich. 2018. Was Higher Education a Major Channel Through Which the US Became an Economic Superpower in the 20th Century?. © Asian Development Bank Institute. http://hdl.handle.net/11540/8099.
    Keywords
    Business Economics
    Economics
    Regional Economic Development
    Women's Education
    Technical Education
    Rural Education
    Quality Education
    Levels Of Education
    Educational Systems
    Educational Statistics
    Economic planning
    Economic policy
    Development assistance
    Development cooperation
    Economic evaluation
    Economic censuses
    Development education
    Educational development
    Educational administration
    Educational planning
    Comparative economics
    Social responsibility of business
    Communication in economic development
    Consumer education
    Foreign trade and employment
    Communication in international trade
    Economic development projects
    Educational exchange
    Educational evaluation
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    Citable URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/11540/8099
    Metadata
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    adbi-wp820.pdf (862.1Kb)
    Author
    Adam Cook
    Isaac Ehrlich
    Theme
    Education
    Economics
    Labor Migration
     
    Copyright 2016-2021 Asian Development Bank Institute, except as explicitly marked otherwise
    Copyright 2016-2021 Asian Development Bank Institute, except as explicitly marked otherwise