Education or Just Creativity: What Matters Most for Economic Performance?

Abstract

There is a large consensus among researchers on the positive role played by human capital on economic performances although the debate on its measurement (education or creativity) is still open. This paper aims to disentangle this issue by proposing a disaggregation of human capital into three non-overlapping categories. Using a spatial error model to account for spatial dependence, we assess the concurrent effect of the human capital indicators on total factor productivity for the EU27 regions. Our results indicate that the highly educated creative group is the most relevant one in explaining production efficiency while the other two categories - non creative graduates and bohemians - exhibit negligible effects. Moreover, a relevant influence is exerted by technological capital and by the level of tolerance providing robust evidence that a highly educated, innovative, open and culturally diverse environment is becoming more and more central for productivity enhancements.