Economic Themes (2009) 47 (1) 5, 89-105

THE INVESTMENT IN HUMAN CAPITAL AS A KEY FACTOR OF THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD


Slavica Jovetić, Nenad Stanišić

Abstract: In the contemporary world, the human capital becomes the key factor of economic development. The introduction of the new technologies, investment in education and innovativeness of the economy are the assumptions of development. Thus, the idea of the development of national innovativeness capacity, i.e. the capability of the economy to produce and explore new ideas, becomes the prerogative. Since the economic theory assume that the level of economic development and economic growth rate depend on the factors as R&D investment, education investment and the number of researches, the aim of this paper is to determine the statistical influence of all this variables on the GDP per capita and growth rate of economy. The statistical and econometrical methods in this paper are used on the example of over 30 European countries.

Keywords:  human capital; economic development; innovativeness capacity

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