Prague Economic Papers 2017, 26(4):467-486 | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.622

Higher Education and Economic Growth. A Comparison between Czech Republic and Romania

Bogdan Oancea1, Richard Pospíšil2, Raluca Mariana Drăgoescu3
1 University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania (bogdan.oancea@faa.unibuc.ro)
2 Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic (richard.pospisil@upol.cz)
3 National Statistics Institute of Romania, Bucharest, Romania (dragoescuraluca@gmail.com)

Although there is a strong theoretical framework for the economic growth and its relationship with education, the empirical evidence of this relationship is rather scarce. In this paper we investigated the causality and the long-run relationship between economic growth and higher education in the Czech Republic and Romania, using data series for 1980-2013 period. We used a VECM to analyse the long-run relationship between higher education and economic growth and Granger methodology to test the causality between variables. The results showed that higher education has an important positive effect on economic growth, although the impact level of the higher education on economic growth is different in the two countries. We also showed that there is a causality relationship that goes from higher education to economic growth for both countries.

Keywords: higher education, economic growth, cointegration, ADF, unit roots
JEL classification: C32, I21, I23

Published: August 1, 2017  Show citation

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Oancea, B., Pospíšil, R., & Drăgoescu, R.M. (2017). Higher Education and Economic Growth. A Comparison between Czech Republic and Romania. Prague Economic Papers, 26(4), 467-486. doi: 10.18267/j.pep.622
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