The objective of the paper is to develop and empirically test an economic growth model that incorporates education, income distribution effects and technology. In the empirical tests, one of the driving forces of productivity growth is the ratio of the average knowledge levels of employees and entrepreneurs. Besides this variable and a measure of technology the following variables are considered: i) the income index of the 10% richest; ii) the income index of the 40% poorest; iii) middle class income size index; iv) the Gini coefficient and two control variables: v) self employed and vi) the unemployment rate. The econometrics of panel data employed includes panel tests for stationary, heterogeneity, auto-correlation, cross-section dependency, and fixed, random and dynamic effect estimates. The overall result shows that the productivity growth is influenced positively by: a) the increase in the employee-employers education level; b) income redistribution policies that benefits middle classes and the 40% poorest in the economy; c) the imported technology. Nevertheless, the investment in education made by the Brazilian States has a negative impact on their productivity growth rate. It may behave as shift tax that allocates inputs from production of goods to the human capital accumulation sector.
economic growth; income distribution; education and panel data analysis
