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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
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Issue of 2006‒07‒02
twelve papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini Universita degli Studi di Roma, La Sapienza |
| By: | Bernardina Algieri |
| Abstract: | This paper considers the dynamics of human capital in Russia, examining its changes over the transition period. A theoretical model has been developed to explain why a significant endowment of human capital creates the possibility but not the certainty of sustainable economic growth. An overview of the main high tech districts concludes the analysis |
| JEL: | J24 O30 O15 |
| Date: | 2006–06–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:liu:liucej:29&r=hrm |
| By: | Anna Iara (The Vienna Institute of International Economic Studies and Center for European Integration Studies, University of Bonn) |
| Abstract: | Temporary migration is of growing significance in Europe. Upon migration to a country with higher technological development that typically coincides with positive wage differentials, temporary migrants may upgrade their skills by learning on the job and subsequently import the newly acquired human capital to their source country, thus adding to international know-how diffusion and the catching up of the respective economy. This paper is the first to provide supportive evidence of this hypothesis in a cross-country East to West European perspective, using the 2003 Youth Eurobarometer dataset. |
| Keywords: | Central and Eastern Europe, return migration, wage premium, skill diffusion |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:csl:devewp:210&r=hrm |
| By: | T. Paul Schultz (Economic Growth Center, Yale University) |
| Abstract: | This paper assesses the empirical relationship between the liberalization of international trade and the economic status of women. Although historically globalization is not generally linked to the advancement of women, several recent country studies find export led growth in middle and low income countries is associated with improvements in women’s employment opportunities. Does intercountry empirical evidence confirm this association across a wider range of countries, and suggest the mechanisms by which it operates? Measures of wages for men and women are an unreliable basis for study of gender inequality in many low-income countries, and thus schooling and health are analyzed here as indicators of productivity and welfare and gender gaps. For a sample of 70 countries observed at five year intervals from 1965 to 1980, tariff, quota, and foreign exchange restrictions are found to be inversely associated with trade, and with the levels of education and health, especially for women. Natural resource exports, although providing foreign exchange for imports, appear to reduce investments in schooling and health, and delay the equalization of these human capital investments between men and women. Liberalization of trade policy is consequently linked in the cross section to increased trade, to greater accumulation of human capital, and to increased gender equality. |
| Keywords: | Trade Liberalization, Schooling, Health, Gender Equality |
| JEL: | I12 J16 I21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egc:wpaper:935&r=hrm |
| By: | Riccardo Faini (Università di Roma Tor Vergata, Centro Studi Luca d’Agliano, IZA and CEPR) |
| Abstract: | In most destination countries, immigration policies are increasingly tilted toward the most skilled individuals. Whether this shift hurts economic prospects in sending countries, as argued by the traditional brain drain literature, is somewhat controversial. The most recent literature has focused on the link between skilled out-migration and educational achievements. In this paper, we emphasize a different channel. It is often argued that skilled migrants raise economic welfare at home thanks to a relatively larger flow of remittances. Skilled migrants typically earn relatively more and, ceteris paribus, will therefore remit more. However, they are also likely to spend a longer span of time abroad and also are more likely to reunite with their close family in the host country. Both factors should be associated with a relatively smaller flow of remittances from skilled migrants. Hence, the sign of the impact of the brain drain on total remittances is an empirical question. We first develop a simple model showing that skilled migrants may have indeed a lower propensity to remit home out of a given flow of earnings abroad. We then derive an empirical equation of remittances and estimate it on a large panel of developing countries. As a measure of the brain drain, we use the dataset by Docquier and Marfouk (2004) that in turn builds on the pioneering work of Carrington and Detragiache (2004). We find considerable evidence that the brain drain is associated with a smaller flow of remittances. |
| Keywords: | remittances, migration, brain drain |
| JEL: | F02 F22 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:csl:devewp:214&r=hrm |
| By: | Francine D. Blau (Cornell University, NBER, CESifo and IZA Bonn); Lawrence M. Kahn (Cornell University, CESifo and IZA Bonn) |
| Abstract: | Using Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data, we study the slowdown in the convergence of female and male wages in the 1990s compared to the 1980s. We find that changes in human capital did not contribute to the slowdown, since women’s relative human capital improved comparably in the two decades. Occupational upgrading and deunionization had a larger positive effect on women’s relative wages in the 1980s, explaining a portion of the slower 1990s convergence. However, the largest factor was that the “unexplained” gender wage gap fell much faster in the 1980s than the 1990s. Our evidence suggests that changes in labor force selectivity, changes in gender differences in unmeasured characteristics and in labor market discrimination, as well as changes in the favorableness of demand shifts each may have contributed to the slowing convergence of the unexplained gender pay gap. |
| Keywords: | gender pay gap, wage differentials |
| JEL: | J16 J31 |
| Date: | 2006–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2176&r=hrm |
| By: | Pierpaolo Giannoccolo |
| Abstract: | This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on Brain Drain (BD). We propose an ideal path that links the first studies with the most recent ones. In this development, the literature on BD focuses on a variety of economic and social issues and recalls to national and international debates. This paper uses more than 350 articles from a variety of sources. The sources are specialized professionals journals, internet research engines, governmental publications and newspapers. In the first section we analyse the main motivations of the researchers to study the BD and we propose an ideal path to interpret this literature. In the second section we analyse the different definitions of the BD and we show that the BD is a wide and complex phenomenon. In the third section we analyse the historical roots of the BD by identifying the BD “ante litteram”. In the fourth section we analyse the “geography” of the BD. Finally, in the fifth section we analyse both some important topics linked to the BD (International Organizations, Population and Research), both the economics models that study the BD. |
| Keywords: | Brain Drain, International Migration, Human Capital, Growth, Economic Methodology and History of Economic Thought |
| JEL: | B20 B41 F02 F22 H20 I20 I30 |
| Date: | 2004–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mis:wpaper:20060302&r=hrm |
| By: | Mansuri, Ghazala |
| Abstract: | Inequalities in access to education pose a significant barrier to development. It has been argued that this reflects, in part, borrowing constraints that inhibit private investment in human capital by the poor. One promise o f the recent proposals to open international labor markets to allow for the temporary economic migration of low-skilled workers from developing to industrial countries is its potential impact on human capital accumulation by the poor. The large remittance flows from migrants to their communities of origin underscores this aspect of migration. However, migration can also transform expectations of future employment and induce changes in household structure that can exert an independent effect on the private returns to investment in human capital. The author explores the relationship between temporary economic migration and investment in child schooling. A key challenge is to deal appropriately with selection into migration. She finds that the potential positive effects of temporary economic migration on human capital accumulation are large. Moreover, the gains are much greater for girls, yielding a very substantial reduction in gender inequalities in access to education. Significantly, though, the gains appear to arise almost entirely from the greater resource flows to migrant households. The author cannot detect any effect of future migration prospects on schooling decisions. More significantly, she does not find any protective effect of migration-induced female headship on schooling outcomes for girls. Rather, female headship appears to protect boys at the cost of girls. |
| Keywords: | Gender and Development,Primary Education,Youth and Governance,Anthropology,Education For All |
| Date: | 2006–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3945&r=hrm |
| By: | Rapopor t, Hillel; McKenzie, David |
| Abstract: | The authors examine the impact of migration on educational attainment in rural Mexico. Using historical migration rates by state to instrument for current migration, they find evidence of a significant negative effect of migration on schooling attendance and attainment of 12 to 18 year-old boys and 16 to 18 year-old girls. IV-Censored Ordered Probit results show that living in a migrant household lowers the chances of boys completing junior high school and of boys and girls completing high school. The negative effect of migration on schooling is somewhat mitigated for younger girls with low educated mothers, which is consistent with remittances relaxing credit constraints on education investment for the very poor. However, for the majority of rural Mexican children, family migration depresses educational attainment. Comparison of the marginal effects of migration on school attendance and on participation in other activities shows that the observed decrease in schooling of 16 to 18 year-olds is accounted for by the current migration of boys and increased housework for girls. |
| Keywords: | Education For All,Primary Education,Teaching and Learning,Anthropology,Child Labor |
| Date: | 2006–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3952&r=hrm |
| By: | Randall Reback (Barnard College, Columbia University) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines whether minimum competency school accountability systems, such as those created under No Child Left Behind, influence the distribution of student achievement. Because school ratings in these systems only incorporate students' test scores via pass rates, this type of system increases incentives for schools to improve the performance of students who are on the margin of passing but does not increase short-run incentives for schools to improve other students' performance. Using student-level, panel data from Texas during the 1990's, I explicitly calculate schools' short-run incentives to improve various students' expected performance, and I find that schools do respond to these incentives. Students perform better than expected when their test score is particularly important for their schools' accountability rating. Also, low achieving students perform better than expected in math when many of their classmates' math scores are important for the schools' rating, while relatively high achieving students do not perform better. Distributional effects appear to be related to broad changes in resources or instruction, as well as narrowly tailored attempts to improve the performance of specific students. |
| Keywords: | School Accountability; Performance measures; Test scores; No Child Left Behind; School Ratings; Incentives; Distributional Effects; Minimum Competency |
| JEL: | I28 H39 |
| Date: | 2006–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:brn:wpaper:0602&r=hrm |
| By: | Servaas van der Berg (Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University) |
| Abstract: | Massive differentials on achievement tests and examinations reflect South Africa’s divided past. Improving the distribution of educational outcomes is imperative to overcome labour market inequalities. Historically white and Indian schools still outperform black and coloured schools in examinations, and intraclass correlation coefficients (rho) reflect far greater between-school variance compared to overall variance than for other countries. SACMEQ’s rich data sets provide new possibilities for investigating relationships between educational outcomes, socio-economic status (SES), pupil and teacher characteristics, school resources and school processes. As a different data generating process applied in affluent historically white schools (test scores showed bimodal distributions), part of the analysis excluded such schools, sharply reducing rho. Test scores were regressed on various SES measures and school inputs for the full and reduced sample, using survey regression and hierarchical (multilevel) (HLM) models to deal with sample design and nested data. This shows that the school system was not yet systematically able to overcome inherited socio-economic disadvantage, and poor schools least so. Schools diverged in their ability to convert inputs into outcomes, with large standard deviations for random effects in the HLM models. The models explained three quarters of the large between-school variance but little of the smaller within-school variance. Outside of the richest schools, SES had only a mild impact on test scores, which were quite low in SACMEQ context. |
| Keywords: | Analysis of Education |
| JEL: | J21 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sza:wpaper:wpapers20&r=hrm |
| By: | Tran Ngoc Ca |
| Abstract: | This study looks at the contribution of the university system in Vietnam to the socioeconomic development in general, and their relationship with firms, dynamic actors of the economy in particular. The study uses different methods of research, from reliance on secondary data to interviews with universities and survey of firms. Several case studies of the key universities in four regions have been undertaken: Hanoi in the north, Danang in the center, and Ho Chi Minh City and Cantho in the south of Vietnam. The findings show that the role of Vietnamese universities in research is much weaker than teaching, and that their contribution to the socioeconomic development of the country is limited to the production of an educated labor force rather than innovation. However, in selected universities, innovation did take place to a certain extent and brought benefits for both the universities and firms they served. This situation is explained by both the inherited university system in Vietnam and its shift in behavior in the context of economic renovation and globalization. |
| Keywords: | Tertiary Education,ICT Policy and Strategies,Agricultural Knowledge & Information Systems,Rural Development Knowledge & Information Systems,Access & Equity in Basic Education |
| Date: | 2006–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3949&r=hrm |
| By: | Michele Cincera (DULBEA-CERT, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, and CEPR); Lydia Greunz (Collaborateur scientifique FNRS, DULBEA-CERT, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels); Jean-Luc Guyot (IWEPS, Institut wallon de l'évaluation, de la prospective et de la statistique); Olivier Lohest (IWEPS, Institut wallon de l'évaluation, de la prospective et de la statistique) |
| Abstract: | Ce working paper tente d’identifier, dans le cadre d’une démarche exploratoire et en articulation avec un cadre théorique original, les liens entre la trajectoire socio-professionnelle et le capital humain, défini sur la base des qualifications et de l’expérience professionnelle, d’un ensemble d’individus qui ont (ré)orienté cette trajectoire dans le sens d’un passage à l’entrepreneuriat. Cet ensemble est constitué de primo-créateurs, c’est-à-dire de personnes sans aucune expérience de création d’entreprise antérieure. La thèse défendue par les auteurs est celle d’une articulation forte, au niveau individuel, entre capital humain, tel qu’il peut être appréhendé par le niveau de qualification et l’expérience professionnelle, et dynamique entrepreneuriale. Dans cette optique, trois pistes sont envisagées : - celle des particularités du profil des primo-créateurs, principalement au niveau de ce capital, l’hypothèse étant que ces individus se différencient des non créateurs sur le plan des qualifications ; - celle d’une relation entre sphères d’expérience professionnelle et sphère entrepreneuriale, l’hypothèse étant que le contenu du projet entrepreneurial n’est pas étranger à l’expérience antérieure du créateur ; - celle d’une influence du niveau de qualification et de l’expérience du créateur sur la temporalité du processus de création. Pour ce faire, les données issues de deux larges enquêtes socio-économiques sont analysées en recourant aux outils de la statistique et de l’économétrie. |
| Keywords: | primo-créateurs d’entreprise, capital humain, expérience professionnelle, caractéristiques personnelles, durée du processus de création |
| JEL: | J23 J24 M13 |
| Date: | 2006–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dul:wpaper:06-11rs&r=hrm |