Revisiting Linkages between Openness, Education and Economic Growth: System GMM Approach

For 106 countries over 1969-2004, this paper revisits the relationship between openness, education and economic growth using the System Generalized Method of Moment (GMM) approach. Trade and growth are usually positively correlated and capital formation appears to be an important channel through which trade brings growth. There generally exists a positive relationship between FDI inflow and economic growth for a subset of non-OECD countries. The System GMM estimator improves substantially the estimate of the impact of education on growth relative to the models which focus on within-country changes in education, adding information on cross-country variation in education levels.