nep-hrm New Economics Papers
on Human Capital and Human Resource Management
Issue of 2007‒04‒14
thirteen papers chosen by
Fabio Sabatini
University of Rome, La Sapienza

  1. Human capital and successful academic spin-off By Müller, Bettina
  2. Where do I go and what should I do? Routes through further education. By Pamela Lenton
  3. Educational expansion and its heterogeneous returns for wage workers By Gebel, Michael; Pfeiffer, Friedhelm
  4. Does mobility of educated workers undermine decentralized education policies? By Christiane Schuppert
  5. Market Failure, Human Capital, and Job Search Dynamics in South Africa: The Case of Duncan Village By Patrick Duff; David Fryer
  6. Sources of Regional Income Disparity in Rural Vietnam: Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition By Takahashi, Kazushi
  7. Knowledge management in higher education. A conceptual analysis By Ferrer, Julian; Ríos, Manriquez
  8. Violence in European schools : victimization and consequences By Ammermüller, Andreas
  9. Exploring the relationship between scientist human capital and firm performance . the case of biomedical academic entrepreneurs in the SBIR program By Toole, Andrew A.; Czarnitzki, Dirk
  10. Labour market job matching for UK minority ethnic groups By Shirley Dex; Jo Lindley
  11. Distributional effects of the high school degree in Germany By Gernandt, Johannes; Maier, Michael; Pfeiffer, Friedhelm; Rat-Wirtzler, Julie
  12. Explaining Ethnic Disparities in School Enrollment in Turkey By Kirdar, Murat
  13. Once bitten, twice shy? : The performance of entrepreneurial restarts By Metzger, Georg

  1. By: Müller, Bettina
    Abstract: Academic spin-offs are one way in which employability of university graduates is reflected. Using the ZEW spinoff-survey, this paper studies empirically the impact of human capital on the success of academic spinoffs founding in knowledge and technology intensive sectors. The focus is thereby on the composition of human capital which is described according to whether or not the founders have studied several subjects and whether or not they all come from the same research establishment. Additionally the impact of having founded as a team is analyzed. Success is measured by employment growth. The findings suggest that it is advantageous to found within a team, but that the human capital composition both for single entrepreneurs and team foundations is rather irrelevant.
    Keywords: Higher Education, Human Capital, Entrepreneurship, Spin-off
    JEL: C12 L25 M13
    Date: 2006
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:5474&r=hrm
  2. By: Pamela Lenton (Department of Economics, The University of Sheffield)
    Abstract: This paper investigates the educational attainment of young people between the ages of sixteen and eighteen after having entered full-time post-compulsory education. In particular we focus on the educational attainment and labour market trajectory of `underachievers´: young people who have chosen to remain in full-time education at age sixteen, despite not gaining the widely recognised U.K. academic benchmark of five GCSE grades A*-C. Our results suggest that the best route to educational success for young people considered as of lower ability at age 16 is through the FE college where they catch-up with their `more able´ counterparts by age 18.
    Keywords: Attainment, Vocational Education
    JEL: I21 J24
    Date: 2006–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:shf:wpaper:2006014&r=hrm
  3. By: Gebel, Michael; Pfeiffer, Friedhelm
    Abstract: The paper examines the evolution of returns to education in the West German labour market over the last two decades. During this period, graduates from the period of educational expansion in the sixties and seventies entered the labour market and an upgrading of the skill structure took place. In order to tackle the issues of endogeneity of schooling and its heterogeneous returns we apply two estimation methods: Wooldridge’s (2004) approach that relies on conditional mean independence and Garen’s (1984) control function approach that requires an exclusion restriction. For the population of workers from the GSOEP, we find that both approaches produce estimates of average returns to education that decrease until the late 1990s and increase significantly afterwards. In the observation period, the gender gap in returns to education seems to vanish. Furthermore, we find that the so called “baby boomer” cohort has the lowest average return to education in young ages. However, this effect disappears when they become older.
    Keywords: Educational expansion, correlated random coefficient model, heterogeneous returns to education, conditional mean independence
    JEL: J21 J24 J31
    Date: 2007
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:5497&r=hrm
  4. By: Christiane Schuppert
    Abstract: The present paper studies a multi-jurisdictional framework, in which, from a federal perspective, educational subsidies turn out to be efficiency enhancing. However, in the presence of mobile high-skilled labor, local jurisdictions might try to free-ride on other regions´education policies and abstain from subsidizing education. Social mobility is introduced as an additional dimension of labor mobility. Using this framework, it is shown that local governments abide by the optimal decision rule for subsidizing human capital investments. Hence, decentralized education policies remain to be efficient, although high-skilled workers are perfectly mobile. Only if one allows for high- and low-skilled mobility, local incentives to promote education vanish.
    Date: 2007–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mik:wpaper:07_01&r=hrm
  5. By: Patrick Duff; David Fryer (Department of Economics and Economic History, Rhodes University)
    Abstract: Abstract: This paper argues that the economic literature on unemployment and poverty in South Africa has under-explored potentially important feedback mechanisms which, because they serve to change the structure of labour markets and affect human capital trajectories, serve to endogenise labour market exclusion. Using a tailor-made database from Duncan Village, East London, this paper probes such processes, focussing around the question of job search. The evidence presented suggests that endogenous factors generating labour market exclusion are important in locking-in exclusion, and suggests that macro-micro linkages need to be further considered.
    Keywords: macro-micro linkages, unemployment and poverty
    JEL: A1
    Date: 2005–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctw:wpaper:9624&r=hrm
  6. By: Takahashi, Kazushi
    Abstract: This paper investigates determinants of regional income disparity in rural Vietnam, with special emphasis placed on the roles of human capital and land. We apply a decomposition method, suggested by Oaxaca and Blinder. We found that returns to assets rather than endowments, especially those of human capital, are one of the leading factors to account for income differences across regions. We also found that substantial improvements of returns to human capital in the Red River delta region are a driving force to catch up with Mekong River delta region. Unexpectedly, differences in land endowment do not strongly correlate with regional income disparity because better access to land in a region was partially offset by lower returns.
    Keywords: Income inequality, Human capital, Land, Vietnam, Income distribution, Human resources
    JEL: D31 I32 O12
    Date: 2007–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper95&r=hrm
  7. By: Ferrer, Julian; Ríos, Manriquez
    Abstract: Knowledge management represents a field study with a growing interest in several areas. By this, it is necesary to make a detailed analyss about possible impacts in diferent perspectives. Specially, universities must be considered as knowledge managers in its own nature, under their main functions: research, academics, continue education. This work has a main objetive to determinate the KM organizational impact in universities.
    Keywords: Knowledge management; higher education; university
    JEL: D83 I21
    Date: 2006–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:2622&r=hrm
  8. By: Ammermüller, Andreas
    Abstract: Violence at schools is a well-known problem in many societies. This paper assesses the degree of school violence in 11 European countries and analyzes the determinants of being a victim and its effect on student performance. The study draws on the international TIMSS 2003 and the British longitudinal NCDS data. The level of school violence is high in most countries but seems not to increase over time. Besides gender, social and migration background and the appearance of students determine being bullied, hurt or stolen from by fellow students. Being a victim has a small but significantly negative impact on contemporary and later student performance and the level of educational attainment and thereby affects earnings. It is hence an important peer effect that should not be omitted in the estimation of educational production functions.
    Keywords: School violence, bullying, human capital, TIMSS, NCDS
    JEL: I21 J24 Z13
    Date: 2007
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:5491&r=hrm
  9. By: Toole, Andrew A.; Czarnitzki, Dirk
    Abstract: Do academic scientists bring valuable human capital to the companies they found or join? If so, what are the particular skills that compose their human capital and how are these skills related to firm performance? This paper examines these questions using a particular group of academic entrepreneurs – biomedical research scientists who choose to commercialize their knowledge through the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research Program. Our conceptual framework assumes the nature of an academic entrepreneurs’ prior research reflects the development of their human capital. We highlight differences in firm performance that correlate with differences in the scientists’ research orientations developed during their academic careers. We find that biomedical academic entrepreneurs with human capital oriented toward exploring scientific opportunities significantly improve their firms’ performance of research tasks such as “proof of concept” studies. Biomedical academic entrepreneurs with human capital oriented toward exploring commercial opportunities significantly improve their firms’ performance of invention oriented tasks such as patenting. Consistent with prior evidence, there also appears to be a form of diminishing returns to scientifically oriented human capital in a commercialization environment. Holding the commercial orientation of the scientists’ human capital constant, we find that increasing their human capital for identifying and exploring scientific opportunities significantly detracts from their firms’ patenting performance.
    Keywords: Academic Entrepreneurship, SBIR Program, Human Capital, Biotechnology
    JEL: D21 J24 L65 O32
    Date: 2007
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:5498&r=hrm
  10. By: Shirley Dex; Jo Lindley (Department of Economics, The University of Sheffield)
    Abstract: The paper devises a new method of calculating whether individuals are over educated using a parametric model. This new method is applied to men and women from different ethnic groups using data drawn from 4 pooled cross-sections of the UK Labour Force Survey. Calibrated against existing mean-mode methods, the new approach leads to lower levels of over education, more so for men than women. The model is then extended to include non-qualification elements of human capital such as employment experience and job related skills. Model specifications are further varied by educational qualification measures, the presence of children and gender, as well as allowing for full gender segregation by estimating a single equation (pooled men and women) and separate equations (men and women separately). The results show that the while the overall extent of over education has similarities with earlier studies (eg. over-education is more prevalent amongst women than men), the differences between ethnic groups, as well as between minority ethnic groups and White employees, are far less than that found in some earlier studies. Black African men and women had the greatest amount of over education, followed by Chinese women. Bangladeshi women had the lowest rates among women. It is probably possible to explain almost all of the gap in over education rates between white and minority women and men by a combination of factors; differences in working part time, being temporarily over educated and by differences in the quality of educational qualifications.
    Keywords: Qualifications, discrimination, employment, ethnicity
    JEL: J15 J61
    Date: 2007–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:shf:wpaper:2007003&r=hrm
  11. By: Gernandt, Johannes; Maier, Michael; Pfeiffer, Friedhelm; Rat-Wirtzler, Julie
    Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of a high school degree on the wage distribution in the period from 1984 to 2004 in Germany. In that period the share of male workers with a high school degree increased from 16 to 25 percent. An econometric evaluation estimator is used to analyze quantile treatment effects for the whole population of male workers and for the subpopulation of workers with a high school degree. It turns out that the impact of a high school degree on the wage distribution for all workers is positive, whereas its impact on the wage distribution of the workers with a high school degree does statistically not differ from zero. This suggests that the selection of students into grammer schools might have been too restrictive. For more workers higher education would have raised their productivity and wages.
    Keywords: Economic returns to secondary education, econometric evaluation, quantile treatment effects, educational expansion
    JEL: C14 C21 J31
    Date: 2006
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:5481&r=hrm
  12. By: Kirdar, Murat
    Abstract: There exist remarkable differences in educational outcomes across ethnic groups in Turkey. Moreover, almost a quarter of the population of 8- to 15-year-old children belong to ethnic minority groups. Yet, there exists no study that examines the ethnic disparities in educational outcomes in Turkey. This study presents these disparities and uncovers the factors that bring about these disparities using a rich micro-level dataset (Turkish Demographic and Health Survey). In doing so, this paper examines the differences not only in the levels of enrollment but also in the timing of drop-out across ethnic groups. The multivariate analysis accounts for a rich set of regional and socioeconomic factors, which also display striking differences across ethnic groups. The results show that regional and family level characteristics can fully account for the differences in the levels of enrollment across ethnic groups for male children, but not fully for female children. In other words, ethnicity has a direct impact on girls' school enrollment but not on boys'. There exists a gender gap among ethnic Turkish children as well as ethnic Arabic and Kurdish children. However, the gender gap among ethnic Kurdish children is wider than that among ethnic Turkish children.
    Keywords: Education; Ethnicity; Gender; Human Capital
    JEL: I21 J16 J15
    Date: 2007–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:2649&r=hrm
  13. By: Metzger, Georg
    Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of entrepreneurial experience on firm growth. According to the human capital theory, individuals who have higher ‘human capital’ are more successful than others. Entrepreneurial experience is a kind of human capital and, therefore, should affect firm performance positively. In reality, however, not all types of experience indicate enhanced knowledge alone. Bad experience, here the experience of failure, might equally be a signal for entrepreneurial weakness and, thus, an argument for exercising restraint in possible further business ventures. The ambiguous effects of this failure experience on firm success necessitate an in-depth analysis of the issue. Therefore, this paper contains an empirical comparison of firms involving experienced entrepreneurs and novice firms. The analysis shows that entrepreneurial experience affects firm growth positively. Accounting for failure experience separately reveals a negative effect. Interpreting this finding in combination with other control measures indicates that failed entrepreneurs indeed behave more cautiously regarding firm growth.
    Keywords: Business Failure, Firm Growth, Entrepreneurial experience
    JEL: G33 J23 M13
    Date: 2006
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:5476&r=hrm

This nep-hrm issue is ©2007 by Fabio Sabatini. It is provided as is without any express or implied warranty. It may be freely redistributed in whole or in part for any purpose. If distributed in part, please include this notice.
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