Human Capital Quality And Regional Economic Growth Differences In China Under The Open Economy

With the deepening of economic globalization,China's open economy has also entered a new stage of development.The transnational flow of production factors such as material capital,human capital and technology has made significant changes in factor endowment,trade structure,industrial structure and economic growth rate of different countries.The report of the 19 th national congress of the communist party of China pointed out that socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era,China's economy has shifted from a stage of rapid growth to a stage of high-quality development,and the high-quality development of China's economy needs high-quality human capital to provide support.General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: development is the top priority,talent is the first resource,innovation is the primary driving force.Human capital is the main power source to improve productivity and sustainable economic growth in the long run.It is of great practical significance to scientifically understand and measure human capital and then study its role in China's economic development.Many domestic and foreign literatures take the average years of education as the synonym of human capital,ignoring ability and only considering education level distorts the connotation of human capital,which will lead to biased estimation of the effect of human capital.Based on the development of new human capital theory,this paper puts cognitive human capital and non-cognitive human capital into the general equilibrium model and constructs the human capital quality index model under the condition of open economy.Using the data of Chinese provincial macro level and individual micro level,we calculate the cognitive human capital productivity,non-cognitive human capital productivity and human capital quality index of 31 provinces and cities in China,and specifically analyze the relationship between human capital quality and per capita output of different provinces and cities in China.Human capital and economic growth are hot issues in economic research.This paper tries to answer the following four questions: first,is there any difference between the ranking of the indicators of average years of education and cognitive human capital productivity in different provinces of China? Second,how does the productivity of non-cognitive human capital affect the quality of human capital? Is this dimension important? Third,as a comprehensive index to measure the quality of human capital in different regions,compared to the indicator of average years of education,which index is more scientific? Fourth,can the differences of human capital quality in different regions of China explain the differences of economic growth in different regions of China? What are the mechanisms and effects of different types of human capital on total factor productivity?The empirical research in this paper is divided into two main lines.One is to analyze the relationship between human capital quality and regional economic growth in China under the condition of open economy,and the other is to analyze the relationship between human capital quality and total factor productivity in China under the condition of open economy.The econometric model construction is based on the theoretical analysis of the mechanism of human capital on economic growth in chapter 3 of this paper.We use panel data of 31 provinces in China from 2008 to 2017 to test the different mechanisms of human capital.The main conclusions of this study are: first,there is a big difference between the ranking of cognitive human capital productivity and the ranking of average years of education in 31 provinces of China.Second,non-cognitive human capital is very important to the quality of human capital,and the productivity of non-cognitive human capital has an important impact on per capita output.Third,cognitive human capital productivity,non-cognitive human capital productivity and output TFP significantly promoted the output per capita of all provinces,and the cognitive human capital productivity had a greater effect on the output per capita than the non-cognitive human capital productivity.Fourth,the human capital quality index can comprehensively reflect the human capital quality levels of different provinces in China.Taking the average years of education as the proxy variable of human capital,the estimated results will overestimate the impact of human capital on per capita output.Fifth,the improvement of human capital quality will make the economic growth of China's 31 provinces tend to converge,and the difference of human capital quality is an important factor affecting the economic growth of different regions.Sixth,the quality of human capital is also an important factor affecting the growth of total factor productivity.Different types of human capital have different influencing mechanisms on economic growth.Cognitive human capital promotes the growth of total factor productivity through technological imitation,while non-cognitive human capital promotes the growth of total factor productivity by accelerating the speed of technological innovation.