ASSESSMENT OF COUNTRY’S HUMAN CAPITAL AS A FACTOR OF NATIONAL ECONOMY’S COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES FORMATION
Background . Strengthening of positions on international markets nowadays requires broadening the circle of competitive advantages of a national economy mainly through factors that have a decisive role in improving the quality of its growth. Accumulation of human capital acts as the major factor in conditions of the transition to a postindustrial stage of development. Aim of the current research consists in the quantitative analysis of accumulation results for establishing future priority areas. Materials and methods . Empirical material for achieving the research objectives has been taken from the last report of a non-governmental organization “World Economic Forum” that is annually holding a discussion on the state and perspectives of investment in human capital in the Swiss town Davos over many years. Basis for research methodology constitutes the index method, which is augmented by the statistic-factological one with comparative analysis and statistical grouping techniques inherent to it. Results . A pronounced direct relationship between the amounts of population income and country’s disposable human capital is proven to exist in the world. Commonalities and differences between the two leaders of the “emerging markets” group of countries in occurrence of their competitive advantages on international markets are revealed. Comparative analysis of the values of Human Capital Index, its subindices and indicators enabled to identify strong and weak sides of Russia and China in this respect as well as determine certain reasons for the detected peculiarities of countries. Conclusions . Russia by far surpasses China in the available human capital potential, at the same time being inferior in the extent of its exploitation. A relatively lower demand for and effectiveness of human capital use by the Russian economy becomes particularly evident from its evaluation on the higher education level. Resolving this problem would permit to expect a substantial increase in competitiveness of the domestic economy.