Türkiye’de Be eri Sermaye ve Ekonomik Büyüme li kisinin Analizi(An Analysis of the Relationship Between Human Capital and Economic Growth in Turkey)

The aim of this paper is to test empirically the effect of human capital investment on economic development by using time series methods for the period 1981–2006 in Turkey. We employ the real per capita growth rate as a depented variable and physical capital and human capital as indepented variables. Growth rate of total fixed capital is used for total physical capital variables. In case of human capital; the share of total education expenditure in GDP, the share of total health expenditure in GDP and rate of school enrollment are used by turns. The main hypothesis is to test whether the primal factor is human capital in Turkish economic development. To test this hypothesis we use Romer’s (1990) Endogenous Technological Change Model (ETCM). The Engle-Granger two step co-integration method is used with time series.The econometric results indicate that physical and human capital accumulation affects positively Turkish economic development. But, when we apply model selection criterion, the main result of this paper show that the Turkish economy has acchieved endogenous growth depending on physical capital rather than human capital.