Human Capital in Low-Tech Manufacturing: The Geography of the Knowledge Economy in Denmark

Abstract

An essential feature associated with the rise of the knowledge economy has been the increasing focus on the importance of human capital as a precondition for economic growth. Human capital has been found to have a positive impact on the economic growth of high-tech industries, however, the influence of human capital on the development of low-tech industries is yet to be analysed. This paper provides such an examination of low-tech industries based on an analysis of employment data within manufacturing industries in Denmark in the period 1993–2006. The findings highlight, first, that human capital appears to be equally important for economic development in low-tech industries and, second, that the divide between the large urban regions, especially Copenhagen, and the rest of the country plays the primary role in explaining the geography of human capital. These findings stress the relevance of a broad conception of the knowledge economy which goes beyond high-tech industries.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank two anonymous referees and Høgni Kalsø Hansen for valuable comments. The paper was partly written while Teis Hansen was a visiting doctoral fellow at the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations, Sciences-Po Paris/CNRS. His work was funded by the Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen, with additional financial support from the Swedish Research Council (Linnaeus Grant No. 349200680) and the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (Grant agreement 2010-07370). The usual disclaimer applies.

Notes

1. , where a_x is local employment in industry x, c is total local employment, b_x is Danish employment in industry x and d is total Danish manufacturing employment. LQ = 1 indicates an average concentration of the industry, LQ < 1 indicates under-representation and LQ > 1 indicates over-representation.