The Impact of Human Capital Development on Competitiveness

Intellectual resources are the main drivers of competitiveness in the knowledge economy. The literature dealing with intellectual capital mainly distinguishes three components of intellectual capital - human, structural and relational capital. The component that has the most significant influence on value creation and competitiveness is human capital. Thus, the aim of this paper is to determine the impact of human intellectual capital on competitiveness in the EU countries and Serbia, as well as to examine to what extent Serbia lags behind the EU countries regarding human capital development. The obtained results show that human capital has significant impact on competitiveness in the EU countries and Serbia, and that Serbia considerably lags behind the EU countries as regards human capital development.