Human Capital, Unions and Productivity in a Labour-skilled Sectoral Approach

This research paper aims to provide an empirical validation of the impact of human capital accumulation and labour market institutions on productivity growth. The primary objective of this study is to analyse economic and employment growth tendencies in the period between 1985 and 2007 in various OECD member countries. In our estimations we followed a specific taxonomy to identify the features of output per capita growth in different labour-skilled branches. Besides determining the sectoral differences of labour demand by standard comparative statistics, we used a dynamic panel regression method in our estimations to investigate the relationships between employment, human capital, labour institutions and output per capita. All in all, we were able to conclude that the high-skilled branches have achieved better economic growth performance than the lower-skilled ones in most of the OECD countries. Analysing the time series panel data of these countries our results also yield valid relationships between the level of education, labour unions and productivity growth in different branches.