Formal education and public knowledge

The transitional dynamics of human capital growth models, such as Lucas (1998), would attribute the arrival of education to the diminishing marginal productivity of physical capital. Conversely, the model proposed here suggests that it is the rate of learning that catches up with the rate of return on physical capital. As technical knowledge expands, the rate of return on education increases, inducing individuals to stay longer in school. The model's transitional paths are matched with long run U.S. educational and economic data.