The relationship between technology and economic growth: The moderating role of human capital

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Most economists believe that the lack of investment in manpower is the cause of low economic growth in developing countries, and as long as these countries do not use their knowledge to improve their professional skills, the return on labor and capital will remain at a low level. This study was designed to evaluate the impact of human capital on the relationship between technological advances and economic growth in Southwest Asia within 2000 and 2018. For this purpose, the growth of internet economy in the world and the development of education for strengthening the human capital and its effect on the world economic growth were studied. METHODS: The technological advances were assessed using two Components of the number of… internet users …and the number of mobile subscribers. The scope of this research is from 2000 to 2018.The Generalized Movement Method and the EViews 10.0 software were used to test the research hypothesis through model. FINDINGS: The first model showed that the significant effect of human capital on the relationship between internet and economic growth. In this model, the internet coefficient was equal to 0.357, implying that the economic growth in the studied countries would increase at a rate of 0.0357 units with the increase of the internet coefficient by one unit. Moreover, the human capital coefficient was equal to 0.0618, implying that the economic growth in the intended countries would be improve by 0.06 units with the increase of the human capital coefficient by one unit. The second model revealed the significant relationship between mobile phones and economic growth in the countries with a higher human capital involving the educated employed people. This was consistent with the results of self-correlation of fixed effects. CONCLUSION: According to the results, it was concluded that human capital would moderate the relationship between internet and economic growth. Moreover, it was confirmed that the effect of education on the relationship between mobile phones and economic growth was significant.