“Intelligence, Human Capital, and Economic Growth: A Bayesian Averaging of Classical Estimates (BACE) Approach”, 2006 (; similar):
Human capital plays an important role in the theory of economic growth, but it has been difficult to measure this abstract concept.
We survey the psychological literature on cross-cultural IQ tests and conclude that intelligence tests provide one useful measure of human capital. Using a new database of national average IQ, we show that in growth regressions that include only robust control variables, IQ is statistically-significant in 99.8% of these 1330 regressions, easily passing a Bayesian model-averaging robustness test.
A 1 point increase in a nation’s average IQ is associated with a persistent 0.11% annual increase in GDP per capita.