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Higher Education, Human Capital, and Regional Dynamics in Southern Europe

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Regional Upgrading in Southern Europe

Part of the book series: Advances in Spatial Science ((ADVSPATIAL))

Abstract

Although the term “human capital” has remote historical roots, being already widespread in the writings of the founding fathers of economic analysis, it was during the second half of the twentieth century that an increasing debate around human capital emerged among scholars. The increasing relevance of human capital for economic growth was also associated with the role of technology and its impact in enhancing the demand for more and better qualified workers. However, the capacity of societies to take advantage of those investments has been found to be more complex and uncertain than it was initially portrayed. A more recent line of research started recognizing the potential role of human capital also at the regional level. In this chapter we aim at understanding the role of human capital on regional convergence for Southern Europe countries, with particular emphasis in recent empirical studies. We discuss the role of human capital in the framework of growth convergence theories and the issue of human capital migration as a potential factor influencing regional disparities in Europe. Then we focus on an important component of human capital formation—the role of higher education institutions at the regional level and we review the empirical findings on these issues in the context of Southern Europe (Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain). Finally we provide a brief exploratory analysis of the potential association between the education of the population and the GDP per capita at the regional-level for those four countries.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This corresponds to the concept of “conditional convergence”. Unconditional convergence, instead, occurs whenever all countries/regions converge to the same level of GDP per capita, independently of their initial structural conditions. Closer to the “conditional convergence” definition is that of “club convergence”. It is associated with multiple equilibrium values of GDP per capita to which countries will converge, depending on their initial conditions.

  2. 2.

    Similar results about the importance of migration and human capital in generating regional inequalities are shown in Duranton and Monastiriotis (2002), Overman and Puga (2002) and Faggian and McCann (2009).

  3. 3.

    For recent reviews on the effects of Higher Education Institutions in the Industry, see Casper (2013) and Perkmann et al. (2013).

  4. 4.

    Some authors deal instead with the relationship between human capital and growth (e.g., Asteriou and Agiomirgianakis 2001; Tsamadias and Prontzas 2012).

  5. 5.

    The EUMIDA Project (EUMIDA 2010) was carried out under the European Commission (Directorate General [DG] Research, DG Education and Culture, and EUROSTAT). Data collections were performed at the country level and included 1518 public and 931 private HEIs in the academic year of 2008/09. Data cover HEIs from 27 countries: the European Union member states (excluding Croatia, Denmark and France) plus Norway and Switzerland. The dataset includes information on the regions where each HEI is located. However, only the total number of enrolled students is provided, and this number is not divided by regions. Therefore, for institutions present in multiple regions, we cannot distinguish the actual number of enrolled students per region. For simplicity, we assume that the number of students is equally divided between the different regions, though we will bear in mind possible implications of this assumption. The weight of the private sectors varies significantly between the different countries in our analysis, being very small in Greece and much more significant in Portugal. Removing the private sector will result in a bias favoring the less developed regions, since it is documented that private institutions are usually located in the richest regions of the country (Teixeira et al. 2014).

  6. 6.

    The global significance tests for the regression yielded p = 0.748 for Spain; p = 0.611 for Greece, p = 0.695 for Italy and p = 0.855 for Portugal.

  7. 7.

    Table 14.2 in the Appendix shows the sensitivity of the results towards the presence of certain regions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Research in Higher Education Policies, CIPES, Rua 1° de Dezembro, 399, 4450-227, Matosinhos, Portugal

    Ricardo Biscaia, Pedro Teixeira, Vera Rocha & Margarida Fonseca Cardoso

  2. Portucalense University Infante D.Henrique, Rua Dr. António Bernardino de Almeida, 541, 4200-072, Porto, Portugal

    Ricardo Biscaia

  3. FEP – Faculty of Economics, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-464, Porto, Portugal

    Pedro Teixeira

  4. Department of Innovation and Organizational Economics, Copenhagen Business School, Kilevej, Kilen 14A, 2000, Frederiksberg, Denmark

    Vera Rocha

  5. ICBAS – Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar, Largo Prof. Abel Salazar, 2, 4099-003, Porto, Portugal

    Margarida Fonseca Cardoso

Authors
  1. Ricardo Biscaia
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  2. Pedro Teixeira
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  3. Vera Rocha
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  4. Margarida Fonseca Cardoso
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Correspondence to Ricardo Biscaia .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Porto, Lisboa, Portugal

    Madalena Fonseca

  2. Department ABC, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy

    Ugo Fratesi

Appendix

Appendix

Table 14.2 Sensitivity of correlation coefficients to the inclusion of specific regions
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Biscaia, R., Teixeira, P., Rocha, V., Cardoso, M.F. (2017). Higher Education, Human Capital, and Regional Dynamics in Southern Europe. In: Fonseca, M., Fratesi, U. (eds) Regional Upgrading in Southern Europe. Advances in Spatial Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49818-8_14

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