Resumen de Human Capital investment and the production model change: a comparative case study of South Korea and Spain
In this paper, we analyse the role of human capital investment as a factor for the economic growth, together with its influence in the prospects for a change in the economic production model. We perform a comparative study of the cases of the Republic of South Korea and Spain, for the period comprising from the end of the World War II to the present time. Throughout the last 70 years, Spain and South Korea have been paramount of economic growth: starting as underdeveloped economies (and in the Korean case, from being at that time one of the poorest countries in the world) to converge with the leading world economies, turning into major industrial economies. In this paper, we study how the investment in human capital can help to explain such a successful development. Furthermore, we investigate how the different patterns of human capital investment observed in both countries can help to understand the different impact that the great 2007 crisis has had in their respective economies, and how it is shaping their strategies and prospects for their economic recovery, in pursuit of the path of economic growth and convergence. South Korea, despite of the enormous geopolitical uncertainties and the needed reforms to incentivise innovation and inequality reduction, is nowadays firmly stablished in a production model specialised in the production of high value technological products. On the contrary, Spain shows an acute deficit in human capital formation, both from the quantitative and qualitative point of view.
