HUMAN CAPITAL AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT - STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS

Human capital is regarded to be one of the major sources of economic growth and also as one of important determinants of national and regional differences. Usually regions with higher human capital endowment have higher per capita output, lower unemployment rate and higher wages than regions with lower level of human capital. This often leads to theories and models which establish a causal link between human capital and economic performance. However, we should ask whether there is really a direct link between human capital and economic performance or whether the economic structure is not the real basis which the differences are based on. Especially in relation to current economic downturn in many countries it seems that the human capital alone is not a guarantee of economic stability and growth and it is necessary to have human capital which is related to the economic structure - it does not work the other way round. The paper deals with a general idea of the relation between human capital and economic performance but establishes clusters of regions with a similar economic structure and analyzes the relation within these clusters.