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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Ahmed Tritah |
| Abstract: | This paper uses the 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2006 U.S. micro censuses data to document the magnitude and nature of European human capital outflow to the United States. I found that while emigration is about a small number of individuals, the share of Europeans who are leaving is increasing as one moves along the educational distribution and ladder of occupations that matter the most in the knowledge economy. Next, using productivity based brain drain indices it is found that aggregate human capital conveyed by emigrants has increased since the 1990s. Finally, as a better understanding on the nature of human capital embodied in European emigrants, I show that the Europeans earn a positive wage premium relative to the US natives. Moreover, this premium is higher for the most recent expatriates cohorts, providing further evidence that the quality of European emigrants has increased. |
| Keywords: | Emigration; brain-drain; human capital; knowledge economy; Europe-US |
| JEL: | F22 J24 O15 |
| Date: | 2008–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cii:cepidt:2008-08&r=hrm |
| By: | Woźny, Łukasz; Growiec, Jakub |
| Abstract: | We analyze an economy populated by a sequence of generations who decide over their consumption levels and the levels of investment in human capital of their immediate descendants. The objective of the paper is to identify the impact of strategic interactions between consecutive generations on the time path of human capital accumulation. To this end, we characterize the Markov perfect equilibrium (MPE) in such an economy and derive the sufficient conditions for its existence and uniqueness. The equilibrium path is computed using a novel constructive approach: extending Reffett and Woźny (2008), we put forward an iterative procedure which converges to the MPE as its limit. To benchmark our results, we also calculate the optimal human capital accumulation paths for (i) a Ramsey-type model with dynastic optimization, and (ii) a model with joy-of-giving altruism. We prove analytically that human capital accumulation is unambiguously lower in the "strategic" model than in the Ramsey-type dynastic model. We complement our results with a series of numerical exercises. |
| Keywords: | human capital; intergenerational interactions; Markov perfect equilibrium; stochastic transition; constructive approach |
| JEL: | I20 J22 C73 |
| Date: | 2008–07–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:10308&r=hrm |
| By: | Singh, Aarti |
| Abstract: | I study the effect of market incompleteness on the aggregate economy in a model where agents face idiosyncratic, uninsurable human capital investment risk. The environment is a general equilibrium lifecycle model with a version of a Ben-Porath (1967) human capital accumulation technology, modified to incorporate risk. A CARA-normal specification keeps endogenous decisions independent of individual shock realizations. I study stationary equilibria of calibrated cases in which idiosyncratic uninsurable risk arises from specialization risk and career risk. Specialization risk is such that both mean and variance of the return from training are increasing in the endogenous decision to invest in human capital. In the case of career risk, however, only the mean return is increasing in the decision to invest in human capital. With career risk only, stationary equilibria resemble those studied by Aiyagari (1994), and one concludes that the impact of uninsurable idiosyncratic risk is relatively small. With a significant amount of specialization risk however, stationary equilibria are severely distorted relative to a complete markets benchmark. One aspect of this distortion is that human capital is only about 57 percent as large as its complete markets counterpart. This suggests that the two types of risk have very different and quantitatively significant general equilibrium implications. Keywords: Human capital risk, life-cycle, incomplete markets. |
| JEL: | E24 E21 E20 |
| Date: | 2008–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:10292&r=hrm |
| By: | Amin, Mohammad; Mattoo, Aaditya |
| Abstract: | Using panel data for the fourteen major states of India over the 1980-2000 period, the authors estimate the effect of human capital endowment on the performance of the state economies. They find that greater availability of skilled workers had a positive and significant impact on output in the service sectors. They do not find any such effect for the manufacturing sectors. The paper shows that the differential effect on services and manufacturing arises because service sectors are more skill intensive. |
| Keywords: | Economic Theory&Research,Transport Economics Policy&Planning,E-Business,Achieving Shared Growth,Access to Finance |
| Date: | 2008–03–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4576&r=hrm |
| By: | Bengtsson, Tommy (Lund University); Scott, Kirk (Lund University) |
| Abstract: | This study charts the differences between the sickness absence of immigrants and Swedes during a period when a flourishing labour market in the beginning of the 1990s turned into a tense and problematic one. We consider not only human capital factors for various immigrant groups and natives, but also workplace conditions and macro level factors. Using register based information on 100,000 individuals for the period 1992-2001, we find large differences in sickness absence between natives and several immigrant groups and that these differences persist after controlling for human capital, workplace factors, and macro economic factors. |
| Keywords: | immigration, health, sickness benefits, labour market, integration |
| JEL: | J15 J21 J32 |
| Date: | 2008–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3672&r=hrm |
| By: | Docquier, Frederic; Faye, Ousmane; Pestieau, Pierre |
| Abstract: | Assuming a given educational policy, the recent brain drain literature reveals that skilled migration can boost the average level of schooling in developing countries. This paper introduces educational subsidies determined by governments concerned by the number of skilled workers remaining in the country. The theoretical analysis shows that developing countries can benefit from skilled emigration when educational subsidies entail high .fiscal distortions. However when taxes are not too distortionary, it is desirable to impede emigration and subsidize education. The authors investigate the empirical relationship between educational subsidies and migration prospects, obtaining a negative relationship for 105 countries. Based on this result, the analysis revisits the country specific effects of skilled migration upon human capital. The findings show that the endogeneity of public subsidies reduces the number of winners and increases the magnitude of the losses. |
| Keywords: | Population Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Access to Finance,International Migration,Emerging Markets |
| Date: | 2008–05–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4614&r=hrm |
| By: | Docquier, Frederic; Lowell, B. Lindsay; Marfouk, Abdeslam |
| Abstract: | This paper updates and extends the Docquier-Marfouk data set on inter-national migration by educational attainment. The authors use new sources, homogenize definitions of what a migrant is, and compute gender-disaggregated indicators of the brain drain. Emigration stocks and rates are provided by level of schooling and gender for 195 source countries in 1990 and 2000. The data set can be used to capture the recent trend in women's skilled migration and to analyze its causes and consequences for developing countries. The .findings show that women represent an increasing share of the OECD immigration stock and exhibit relatively higher rates of brain drain than men. The gender gap in skilled migration is strongly correlated with the gender gap in educational attainment at origin. Equating women's and men's access to education would probably reduce gender differences in the brain drain. |
| Keywords: | Population Policies,Gender and Development,Access to Finance,International Migration,Anthropology |
| Date: | 2008–05–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4613&r=hrm |
| By: | Satish Chand and Michael A. Clemens |
| Abstract: | Does the emigration of highly-skilled workers deplete local human capital? The answer is not obvious if migration prospects induce human capital formation. We analyze a unique natural quasi-experiment in the Republic of the Fiji Islands, where political shocks have provoked one of the largest recorded exoduses of skilled workers from a developing country. Mass emigration began unexpectedly and has occurred only in a well-defined subset of the population, creating a treatment group that foresaw likely emigration and two different quasi-control groups that did not. We use rich census and administrative microdata to address a range of concerns about experimental validity. This allows plausible causal attribution of post-shock changes in human capital accumulation to changes in emigration patterns. We show that high rates of emigration by tertiary-educated Fiji Islanders not only raised investment in tertiary education in Fiji; they moreover raised the stock of tertiary educated people in Fiji—net of departures. |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idc:wpaper:idec08-05&r=hrm |
| By: | Patrinos, Harry Anthony |
| Abstract: | This paper exploits unique information on cognitive ability to examine the importance of schooling and non-schooling cognitive skills for heterogeneous individuals using instrumental variables estimation. Using a binary instrument based on the 1981 reform in Chile, the authors find that the main beneficiaries of the reform were those who at the time were pupils in basic schooling (ages 6-13). For this treated group of pupils, only a negligible part of the estimated return to schooling is due to classical ability bias. The labor market reward to an additional year of schooling is a measure of the"true"non-cognitive return to schooling. However, once the treated group is expanded to include secondary school students, the pure return to schooling decreases dramatically, while the return to schooling cognitive and non-schooling cognitive skills increases accordingly, suggesting that a large part of the estimated return in an earnings function is due to classical ability bias. For this treated group (mixture of basic school and secondary school age students), the labor market rewarded cognitive skills (especially those acquired through schooling) significantly. |
| Keywords: | Education For All,Primary Education,Secondary Education,Teaching and Learning,Access&Equity in Basic Education |
| Date: | 2008–05–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4617&r=hrm |
| By: | Martin Gustafsson (Department of Economics, University of Stellenbosch); Alejandro Morduchowicz (International Institute for Educational Planning, Buenos Aires) |
| Abstract: | An existing accounting framework to describe an education system is elaborated and used as a framework for understanding and comparing the resource allocation policies of the South African and Argentinean schooling systems. The comparison highlights how, by paying fewer teachers more (relative to GDP per capita), South Africa is structurally forced to deal with relatively large class sizes. Both countries have attempted to use production function studies to understand ways of improving pupil performance, and in both countries the utilisation of education human resources appears particularly important. The economic case for expanding secondary schooling is perhaps not as strong as the policies, especially those in Argentina, suggest. Whilst rates of return to secondary schooling do not appear to offer concrete policy direction, a cross-country analysis that takes into account a secondary school completion ratio (a statistic calculated for this analysis) suggests that more policy emphasis should go towards improving the quality of secondary schooling. |
| Keywords: | South Africa, Argentina, education policy, education financing, school, education, secondary school, educational quality |
| JEL: | D20 H52 I22 |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sza:wpaper:wpapers65&r=hrm |
| By: | Jordahl, Henrik (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)); Poutvaara, Panu (University of Helsinki); Tuomala, Juha (Government Institute for Economic Research (VATT)) |
| Abstract: | In a recent paper, García-Mainar and Montuenga-Gómez (2005) apply the generalized IV model of Hausman and Taylor to estimate education returns of wage earners and the self-employed in Portugal and in Spain. Our examination reveals several problems which relate to the validity and documentation of the instrumental variables, as well as the robustness of the results. |
| Keywords: | Education; Entrepreneurship; Human capital; EGIV estimator |
| JEL: | C23 I21 J31 |
| Date: | 2008–08–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0762&r=hrm |
| By: | Abhijit Banerjee; Rukmini Banerji; Esther Duflo; Rachel Glennerster; Stuti Khemani |
| Abstract: | Participation of beneficiaries in the monitoring of public services is increasingly seen as a key to improving their efficiency. In India, the current government flagship program on universal primary education organizes both locally elected leaders and parents of children enrolled in public schools into committees and gives these groups powers over resource allocation, and monitoring and management of school performance. However, in a baseline survey we found that people were not aware of the existence of these committees and their potential for improving education. This paper evaluates three different interventions to encourage beneficiaries' participation through these committees: providing information, training community members in a new testing tool, and training and organizing volunteers to hold remedial reading camps for illiterate children. We find that these interventions had no impact on community involvement in public schools, and no impact on teacher effort or learning outcomes in those schools. However, we do find that the intervention that trained volunteers to teach children to read had a large impact on activity outside public schools -- local youths volunteered to be trained to teach, and children who attended these camps substantially improved their reading skills. These results suggest that citizens face substantial constraints in participating to improve the public education system, even when they care about education and are willing to do something to improve it. |
| JEL: | I21 O12 |
| Date: | 2008–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14311&r=hrm |
| By: | Banerjee, Abhijit V.; Banerji, Rukmini; Duflo, Esther; Glennerster, Rachel; Khemani, Stuti |
| Abstract: | Participation of beneficiaries in the monitoring of public services is increasingly seen as key to improving their efficiency. In India, the current government flagship program on universal primary education organizes community members, specifically locally elected leaders and parents of children enrolled in public schools, into committees and gives these powers over resource allocation, monitoring and management of school performance. However, in a baseline survey this paper finds that people were not aware of the existence of these committees and their potential for improving education. The paper evaluates three different interventions to encourage beneficiaries'participation: providing information, training community members in a new testing tool, and training and organizing volunteers to hold remedial reading camps for illiterate children. The authors find that these interventions had no impact on community involvement in public schools, and no impact on teacher effort or learning outcomes in those schools. However, the intervention that trained volunteers to teach children to read had large impact on activity outside public schools -- local youths volunteered to be trained, and children who attended these camps substantially improved their reading skills. These results suggest that citizens face substantial constraints in participating to improve the public education system, even when they care about education and are willing to do something to improve it. |
| Keywords: | Primary Education,Education For All,Teaching and Learning,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Tertiary Education |
| Date: | 2008–03–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4584&r=hrm |
| By: | Akresh, Richard; de Walque, Damien |
| Abstract: | Civil war, and genocide in particular, are among the most destructive of social phenomena, especially for children of school-going age. In Rwanda school enrollment trends suggest that the school system recovered quickly after 1994, but these numbers do not tell the full story. Two cross-sectional household surveys collected before and after the genocide are used to compare children in the same age group who were and were not exposed to the genocide - and their educational outcomes are substantially different. Children exposed to the genocide experienced a drop in educational achievement of almost one-half year of completed schooling, and are 15 percentage points less likely to complete third or fourth grade. Sustained effort is needed to reinforce educational institutions and offer a"second chance"to those youth most affected by the conflict. |
| Keywords: | Population Policies,Youth and Governance,Primary Education,Post Conflict Reconstruction,Education For All |
| Date: | 2008–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4606&r=hrm |
| By: | Cory Koedel (Department of Economics, University of Missouri-Columbia) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines whether educational production in secondary school involves joint production among teachers across subjects. In doing so, it also provides insights into the reliability of value-added modeling. Teacher value- added to reading test scores is estimated for four different teacher types: English, math, science and social studies. While the initial results indicate that reading output is jointly produced by math and English teachers, post-estimation falsification tests debunk the math-teacher effects - that is, there is in fact no evidence of joint production in secondary school. The results offer a mixed review of the value-added methodology, suggesting that it may be useful in some contexts but not others. . |
| Keywords: | value-added, teacher quality, secondary school teachers, educational production |
| JEL: | I20 |
| Date: | 2008–07–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:umc:wpaper:0808&r=hrm |
| By: | Fox, Louise; Oviedo, Ana Maria |
| Abstract: | Using recent matched employer-employee data from the manufacturing sector in 20 Sub-Saharan African countries, the authors analyze how the supply of skills and legal origin of the country affect the wage setting process. The wage analysis yields three main findings. First, increasing returns to education, especially for older workers, suggest that the expansion of education in Africa has reduced returns to education for entrants in the labor market. Second, age effects matter not just for returns to education, but also for the wage setting process more generally. In particular, in civil-law countries, returns to seniority are rewarded only after a certain age. Third, workers exercise some power in the wage setting process but their influence varies by linguistic group. In common-law countries, union presence benefits all workers equally, not just members, whereas in civil-law countries, only older members enjoy higher wages. The authors also contrast wage premia with relative marginal productivities for different age, occupation, and education categories. The findings show that in general, older, highly educated, and highly ranked workers receive wage premia that do not reflect a higher relative marginal productivity. |
| Keywords: | Labor Markets,,Labor Policies,Access&Equity in Basic Education,Banks&Banking Reform |
| Date: | 2008–08–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4688&r=hrm |
| By: | David M. Brasington; Donald R. Haurin |
| Abstract: | Previous research has established that people bid more for houses in high-performing school districts. But what is it about school outcomes that drive house prices: the parents, the peers, or the school inputs? We study the extent that house values are affected by each of the components of an education production function. Based on 123 school districts and 26,000 house transactions, we find the primary component of school outcomes that is capitalized into house prices is the amount of parental inputs. In the explanation of variations in house prices, variations in parental characteristics are eight times more important than similar variations in school inputs, and twelve times more important than variations in peer groups. This result suggests that land values in a particular community will be increased more by attention to zoning laws that influence the mix of renters to homeowners and the type of households entering a community compared to investing in additional public school inputs. |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cin:ucecwp:2008-09&r=hrm |