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on Human Capital and Human Resource Management |
| By: | Natacha Raffin (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - CNRS : UMR8174 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - Paris I, EEP-PSE - Ecole d'Économie de Paris - Paris School of Economics - Ecole d'Économie de Paris) |
| Abstract: | This article aims at investigating the interplay between environmental quality, health and development. We consider an OLG model, where human capital dynamics depend on the current environment, through its impact on children's school attendance. In turn, environmental quality dynamics depend on human capital, through maintenance and pollution. This two-way causality generates a co-evolution of human capital and environmental quality and may induce the emergence of an environmental poverty trap characterized by a low level of human capital and deteriorated environmental quality. Our results are consistent with empirical observation about the existence of Environmental Kuznets Curve. Finally, the model allows for the assessment of an environmental policy that would allow to escape the trap. |
| Keywords: | Education, environmental quality, growth, health. |
| Date: | 2009–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cesptp:halshs-00384500_v1&r=hrm |
| By: | Stelios Michalopoulos |
| Abstract: | This research examines the economic origins of ethnolinguistic diversity. The empirical analysis constructs detailed data on the distribution of land quality and elevation across contiguous regions, virtual and real countries, and shows that variation in elevation and land quality has contributed significantly to the emergence and persistence of ethnic fractionalization. The empirical and historical evidence is consistent with the proposed hypothesis, according to which heterogeneous land endowments generated region specific human capital, limiting population mobility and leading to the formation of localized ethnicities and languages. The research contributes to the understanding of the emergence of ethnicities and their spatial distribution and offers a distinction between the natural, geographically driven, versus the artificial, man-made, components of contemporary ethnic diversity. |
| Keywords: | Ethnic Diversity, Geography, Technological Progress, Human Capital, Colonization |
| JEL: | O11 O12 O15 O33 O40 J20 J24 |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cca:wpaper:110&r=hrm |
| By: | Giovanni Sulis |
| Abstract: | This paper provides estimates of the average returns to labour market experience and .rm-speci.c tenure for a sample of young Italian male workers. Using instrumental variables, I take into account endogeneity and selection problems generated by job matching and individual fixed effects. Results indicate that OLS estimates for experience and tenure are downward biased and that white collars workers enjoy higher returns to general and specific skills than blue collars. |
| Keywords: | Wages, Experience, Tenure, Search, Endogeneity, Italy |
| JEL: | J24 J31 J62 |
| Date: | 2009–05–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:edn:esedps:189&r=hrm |
| By: | Robert Stehrer (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Piero Esposito (University of Rome "La Sapienza") |
| Abstract: | In this paper we study the effects of high-tech capital, foreign direct investment flows and outsourcing on demand for labour differentiated by educational attainment levels in the manufacturing industries for two groups of countries over the period 1995-2004. These two groups of countries comprise Western and Eastern European countries respectively which are assumed to be differently affected by the European integration process. Using detailed trade data as a basis for measuring outsourcing we further distinguish the effects of trade and outsourcing on relative wages by different groups of partner countries. This allows to study the effects of 'inward' outsourcing and foreign direct investment flows to Central and Eastern European countries (which became quite important in this time) in the Western European countries and - conversely - to study the effects of 'outward' outsourcing and the increase in inward FDI stocks in the Central and Eastern European countries separately. |
| Keywords: | high-tech capital, outsourcing, foreign direct investment, demand for skills |
| JEL: | F15 F16 C23 |
| Date: | 2009–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wii:wpaper:51&r=hrm |
| By: | Pierre Azoulay (Columbia University, Columbia Business School); Christopher C. Liu (Harvard Business School); Toby E. Stuart (Harvard Business School, Entrepreneurial Management Unit) |
| Abstract: | Actors often match with associates on a small set of dimensions that matter most for the particular relationship at hand. In so doing, they are exposed to unanticipated social influences because counterparts have more interests, attitudes, and preferences than would-be associates considered when they first chose to pair. This implies that some apparent social influences (those tied to the rationales for forming the relationship) are endogenous to the matching process, while others (those that are incidental to the formation of the relationship) may be conditionally exogenous, thus enabling causal estimation of peer effects. We illustrate this idea in a new dataset tracking the training and professional activities of academic biomedical scientists. In qualitative and quantitative analyses, we show that scientists match to their postdoctoral mentors based on two dominant factors, geography and scientific focus. They then adopt their advisers' orientations toward commercial science as evidenced by the transmission of patenting behavior, but they do not match on this dimension. We demonstrate this in two-stage models that adjust for the endogeneity of the matching process, using a modification of propensity score estimation and a sample selection correction with valid exclusion restrictions. Furthermore, we draw on qualitative accounts of the matching process recorded in oral histories of the career choices of the scientists in our data. All three methods-qualitative description, propensity score estimators, and those that tackle selection on unobservable factors-are potential approaches to establishing evidence of social influence in partially endogenous networks, and they may be especially persuasive in combination. |
| Date: | 2009–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hbs:wpaper:09-136&r=hrm |
| By: | Oded Galor; Stelios Michalopoulos |
| Abstract: | This research suggests that the evolution of entrepreneurial spirit played a significant role in the process of economic development and the dynamics of inequality within and across societies. The study argues that entrepreneurial spirit evolved non-monotonically in the course of human history. In early stages of development, the rise in income generated an evolutionary advantage to entrepreneurial, growth promoting traits and their increased representation accelerated the pace of technological progress and the process of economic development. Natural selection therefore had magnified growth promoting activities in relatively wealthier economies as well as within the upper segments of societies, enlarging the income gap within as well as across societies. In mature stages of development, however, non-entrepreneurial individuals gained an evolutionary advantage, diminishing the growth potential of advanced economies and contributing to the convergence of the intermediate level economies to the advanced ones. |
| Keywords: | Elasticity of Substitution, Growth, Technological Progress, Evolution, Natural Selection |
| JEL: | O11 O14 O33 O40 J11 J13 |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cca:wpaper:111&r=hrm |