Abstract

This study aims at providing a theoretical concept of human capital and its measurement that have been continually developed for decades and empirically testing the casual relationships between human capital, measured by educational spending, and economic growth of Thailand. The methodologies are through literature synthesis and qualitative analysis as well as time-series quantitative analysis; the data is annually collected during the period 1980 – 2010. The finding indicates that human capital can be defined in different frameworks because its definition changes over time. Nonetheless, owing to a key attribute, it should be defined on a broader view and its spillover effects should be taken into account as well. The other finding is that the standard approaches to human capital measurement are cost-based, income-based and output-based. The empirical results suggest bidirectional causality between human capital and economic growth of Thailand but much clearer for the causation running from human capital to growth. As such, the policy implication is that if the government aims to achieve the long-run economic growth, both increasing the educational opportunity and improving the quality of education are imperative. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.