Do high levels of human capital foster economic growth by facilitating technology adoption? If so, countries with more human capital should have adopted more rapidly the skilled-labor augmenting technologies becoming available since the 1970 s. High human capital levels should therefore have translated into fast growth in more compared to less human-capital-intensive industries in the 1980 s. Theories of international specialization point to human capital accumulation as another important determinant of growth in human-capital-intensive industries. Using data for a large sample of countries, we find significant positive effects of human capital levels and human capital accumulation on output and employment growth in human-capital-intensive industries.