Oxford Economic Papers Advance Access originally published online on June 3, 2004
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Oxford Economic Papers 56 (2004), 461-484
© Oxford University Press 2004; All rights reserved
Returns to scale in producing human capital from schooling
Department of Economics & Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy, University of Maine, 5715 Coburn Hall, Orono, ME 044695715, USA; e-mail: philip.trostel{at}maine.edu
This study examines a crucial assumption in much of the recent work on endogenous growth, namely, constant returns to scale in producing human capital. A simple model is constructed to show that the returns to scale in human capital production can be inferred from the relationship between the wage rate and years of schooling. A large international micro dataset is used to estimate this relationship. The empirical evidence indicates that human capital production displays significant increasing returns at low levels of educational attainment, and significant decreasing returns at high levels of educational attainment.