Although human capital has been recognized as playing important role in spurring productivity growth, its empirical effect remains ambiguous due to the possibility of latent heterogeneity. To reveal the impact of this important driver of economic growth, we propose an alternative empirical methodology, robust frontier in non parametric location-scale models for accommodating simultaneously the problem of model specification uncertainty, latent heterogeneity and cross-section dependence in modelling technical efficiency. We estimate a nonparametric frontier model to define the world technology frontier of 40 countries over the period 1970–2007. Conditional versions of the frontier enables us to investigate the effect of external factors on the production process. One of these factors will allow to measure the openness of the economy of the country and the second will be this latent factor of heterogeneity linked to the absorptive capability and hence to human capital of the country. We have to adjust the methodology to take into account the panel structure of our data set, i.e., handling the time dimension and the cross-sectional dependence affecting the process. Our findings prove that human capital plays an important role in accelerating the technological catch-up (increase in the efficiency) but not on the technological changes (shifts in the frontier). This result seems to confirm the theoretical hypothesis that countries benefit from new technology (technological catch-up) only when they have the ability to exploit it, hence only when they have high level of absorptive capability.

尽管人力资本在促进生产率增长中起着重要作用，但由于潜在的异质性，其经验效果仍然​​模棱两可。为了揭示这一重要的经济增长动力的影响，我们提出了一种替代性的经验方法，即非参数位置尺度模型中的稳健前沿，以同时适应模型规格不确定性，潜在异质性和横截面依存性对技术效率进行建模的问题。我们估计了一个非参数边界模型来定义1970-2007年期间40个国家/地区的世界技术边界。边界的条件版本使我们能够研究外部因素对生产过程的影响。其中一个因素将能够衡量该国经济的开放性，第二个因素将是这种与吸收能力，进而与该国的人力资本相关的异质性潜在因素。我们必须调整方法，以考虑我们数据集的面板结构，即处理影响过程的时间维度和横截面依赖性。我们的发现证明，人力资本在加速技术追赶（提高效率）方面起着重要作用，而在技术变革（前沿转移）方面却起着重要作用。这一结果似乎证实了理论上的假设，即国家只有在有能力利用新技术时才受益于新技术（技术追赶），因此只有在它们具有高水平的吸收能力时才从中受益。