nep-hrm New Economics Papers
on Human Capital and Human Resource Management
Issue of 2009‒08‒08
fifteen papers chosen by
Fabio Sabatini
University of Siena

  1. The Impact of Demographic Change on Human Capital Accumulation By Michael Fertig; Christoph M. Schmidt; Mathias G. Sinning
  2. The Anatomy of Growth in the OECD since 1870: the Transformation from the Post-Malthusian Growth Regime to the Modern Growth Epoch By Jakob B. Madsen
  3. Inequality in Human Development: An empirical assessment of thirty-two countries By Michael Grimm; Kenneth Harttgen; Stephan Klasen; Mark Misselhorn; Teresa Munzi; Timothy Smeeding
  4. Overskilling Dynamics and Education Pathways By Mavromaras, Kostas G.; McGuinness, Seamus; Fok, Yin King
  5. A Human Development Index by Internal Migrational Status By Kenneth Harttgen; Stephan Klasen
  6. Economics, Area Studies and Human Development By Gustav Ranis
  7. Skill-relatedness and firm diversification By Frank Neffke; Martin Svensson Henning
  8. Pro-Poor Progress in Education in Developing Countries? By Kenneth Hartgen; Stephan Klasen; Mark Misselhorn
  9. Migration and Rural Entrepreneurship By Yu, Li; Artz, Georgeanne M.
  10. The role of geographic mobility in reducing education-job mismatches in the Netherlands By Hensen Maud M.; Vries M. Robert de; Cörvers Frank
  11. Local and global indeterminacy in two-sector models of endogenous growth By Paulo Brito; Alain Venditti
  12. R&D Intensity, Technology Transfer and Absorptive Capacity By Md. Rabiul Islam
  13. Does labour mobility reduce disparities between regional labour markets in Germany? By Niebuhr, Annekatrin; Granato, Nadia; Haas, Anette; Hamann, Silke
  14. Elites, Education and Reforms By Mina Baliamoune
  15. The Good, the Bad, and the Talented: Entrepreneurial Talent and Other-Regarding Behavior By Utz Weitzel; Diemo Urbig; Sameeksha Desai; Zoltan Acs; Mark Sanders

  1. By: Michael Fertig; Christoph M. Schmidt; Mathias G. Sinning
    Abstract: This paper investigates whether and to what extent demographic change has an impact on human capital accumulation. The effect of the relative cohort size on educational attainment of young adults in Germany is analyzed utilizing data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for West-German individuals of the birth cohorts 1966 to 1986. These are the cohorts which entered the labor market since the 1980's. Particular attention is paid to the effect of changes in labor market conditions, which constitute an important channel through which demographic change may affect human capital accumulation. Our findings suggest that the variables measuring demographic change exert a considerable though heterogeneous impact on the human capital accumulation of young Germans. Changing labor market conditions during the 1980's and 1990's exhibit a sizeable impact on both the highest schooling and the highest professional degree obtained by younger cohorts.
    Keywords: Demographic Change, Schooling, Vocational Training
    JEL: J11 J24 C25
    Date: 2009–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:auu:dpaper:608&r=hrm
  2. By: Jakob B. Madsen
    Abstract: This paper extends conventional growth accounting exercises to allow for endogeneity of capital, the demographic transition, age dependency, and employment rates among other factors. Using data for the OECD countries in the period 1870-2006 it is shown that growth has been predominantly driven by demographics and TFP growth. TFP has in turn been driven by R&D, knowledge spillovers through the channel of imports, educational attainment, and the interaction between educational attainment and the distance to the frontier. The estimates suggest permanent growth effects of R&D and human capital and, therefore, that growth can be expected to be positive for the rest of this century.
    Keywords: human capital, demographic transition, endogenous growth models
    JEL: O30 O40
    Date: 2009–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mos:moswps:2009-14&r=hrm
  3. By: Michael Grimm (Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Hague, The Netherlands); Kenneth Harttgen (Göttingen University, Germany); Stephan Klasen (Göttingen University, Germany); Mark Misselhorn (Göttingen University, Germany); Teresa Munzi (Luxembourg Income Study, Luxembourg); Timothy Smeeding (Luxembourg Income Study, Luxembourg)
    Abstract: One of the most frequent critiques of the HDI is that it does not take into account inequality within countries in its three dimensions. In this paper, we apply a simple approach to compute the three components and the overall HDI for quintiles of the income distribution. This allows comparison of the level in human development of the poor with the level of the non-poor within countries, but also across countries. This is an application of the method presented in Grimm et al. (2008) to a sample of 21 low and middle income countries and 11 industrialized countries. In particular the inclusion of the industrialized countries, which were not included in the previous work, implies to deal with a number of additional challenges, which we outline in this paper. Our results show that inequality in human development within countries is high, both in developed and industrialized countries. In fact, the HDI of the lowest quintiles in industrialized countries is often below the HDI of the richest quintile in many middle income countries. We also find, however, a strong overall negative correlation between the level of human development and inequality in human development.
    Keywords: Human Development; Income Inequality; Differential Mortality; Inequality in Education
    Date: 2009–07–15
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:got:gotcrc:006&r=hrm
  4. By: Mavromaras, Kostas G. (University of Melbourne); McGuinness, Seamus (Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin); Fok, Yin King (University of Melbourne)
    Abstract: This paper uses panel data and econometric methods to estimate the incidence and the dynamic properties of overskilling among employed individuals. The paper begins by asking whether there is extensive overskilling in the labour market, and whether overskilling differs by education pathway. The answer to both questions is yes. The paper continues by asking whether overskilling is a self-perpetuating labour market state (state dependence), and whether state dependence differs by education pathway. The paper uses a dynamic random effects probit which includes Mundlak corrections and it models the initial conditions following Heckman's method. It finds that there is extensive overskilling state dependence in the workplace, and to the degree that overskilling can be interpreted as skills underutilisation and worker-job mismatch, this is an important finding. Overskilled workers with a higher degree show the highest state dependence, while workers with vocational education show none. Workers with no post-school qualifications are somewhere between these two groups. The finding that higher degree graduates suffer the greatest overskilling state dependence, combined with the well-established finding that they also suffer the highest overskilling wage penalty, offers an alternative and useful perspective to compare the attributes of vocational and degree qualifications.
    Keywords: overskilling, education pathways, state dependence, dynamic estimation
    JEL: J24 J31
    Date: 2009–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4321&r=hrm
  5. By: Kenneth Harttgen; Stephan Klasen
    Abstract: Migration continues to be a very important income diversi¯cation strategy, es- pecially for poor populations in developing countries. However, while there has been much analysis on the economic consequences of migration for migrants and the receiving regions, whether internal migration improves or deteriorates human development is not easy to determine. This papers applies a recently de- velopment analytical framework that allows to calculate the HDI for subgroups of a population. We use this approach to calculate the HDI by internal migra- tional status to assess the di®erences between the levels of human development of internal migrants compared to non-migrants, and also across countries as well as by urban and rural areas. An empirical illustration for a sample of 16 low and middle income countries shows that, overall, internal migrants slightly achieve a higher level of human development than non-migrants. The results further show that di®erences in income between migrants and non-migrants are generally higher than di®erences in education and life-expectancy. Disag- gregating the analysis by urban and rural areas reveals that urban internal migrants are better o® than urban non-migrants and rural migrants are better o® than rural non-migrants.
    Keywords: Human Development; Migration Income Inequality; Differential Mortality; Inequality in Education
    Date: 2009–07–15
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:got:gotcrc:005&r=hrm
  6. By: Gustav Ranis (Yale University, Economic Growth Center)
    Abstract: This paper suggests that area studies and economics have a better chance to be married successfully if we shift our attention from the exclusive emphasis on economic growth towards improvements in human development, especially the much broadened version of that concept. Different areas are shown to differ substantially in terms of the choices they make among the various independent dimensions of well-being and the various indicators within each dimension. The particular characteristics of each area play an important role in determining the choices societies make and the extent to which they are constrained by their initial conditions.
    Keywords: Economics, Human Development, Area Studies
    JEL: O1 O2 O5
    Date: 2009–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:egc:wpaper:975&r=hrm
  7. By: Frank Neffke; Martin Svensson Henning
    Abstract: The concept of "relatedness" between industries plays an increasingly central role in economics and strategic management. However, relatedness has remained rather elusive in empirical terms. In this article, we investigate relatedness between industries in terms of the extent to which the same human capital can be employed in different industries. In particular, we investigate the skill-relatedness among different industries by investigating labor flows between industries. The data used are Swedish employer linked data on individuals. Our statistical framework assesses the degree to which labor flows between pairs of industries are in excess of expected levels and use this as a quantification of Revealed Skill Relatedness. A network picture of 435 4-digit industries and the relatedness linkages between them shows that the relations among industries are far more complex than the industrial classification system suggests. Moreover, when investigating corporate diversification, we find that firms are far more likely to diversify into industries that are strongly skill-related to their core activities industries than into unrelated industries.
    Keywords: Length 29 pages
    Date: 2009–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esi:evopap:2009-06&r=hrm
  8. By: Kenneth Hartgen (University of Göttingen); Stephan Klasen (University of Göttingen); Mark Misselhorn (University of Göttingen)
    Abstract: Spurred by international commitments and expanded funding at the national and international level, attendance in education and associated years of schooling have expanded substantially in developing countries in recent years. But has this expansion in enrolments reduced existing inequalities in educational access and achievements? This paper analyzes differences in improvements in the access to the education system and in educational outcomes across the welfare distribution between and within countries, and also by gender and regions for a sample of 37 developing countries using Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). For the analysis, the toolbox of pro-poor growth analysis is applied to several educational indicators. We find drastic inequalities in educational attendance across the income distribution. Interestingly, inequalities in attendance declines with rising average attendance, while inequality in completion rates or schooling years increases with rising completion rates or schooling years. We find great heterogeneity in the distribution of progress of education, with very little pro-poor progress in educational achievement indicators. Also, progress appears to be less pro-poor in countries with low initial educational achievement and high overall educational progress. We find no correlation between pro-poor progress and free education policies or initial inequality in education. At the regional level, educational progress was generally more pro-poor in Asia and Latin America, while in Africa the experience is very heterogeneous. While gender inequality has decreased slightly, large differences by region tend to persist over time.
    Keywords: education; human capital; inequality; pro-poor growth
    JEL: I20 I29 I31 I32
    Date: 2009–07–15
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:got:gotcrc:008&r=hrm
  9. By: Yu, Li; Artz, Georgeanne M.
    Abstract: This paper investigates entrepreneurship of migrants and their location choice in attempt to draw connections between migration and economic development, especially the role of business formation in rural development. Rural entrepreneurship is firstly attempted to be better understood form perspectives of individual people’s migration, human capital, social capital and family background. The study uses a recent survey on alumni of Iowa State University. We find that social capital and social networks established in one’s home region are shown to be a strong factor in location choice of entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs from rural origins tend to choose to start their businesses in rural areas in general and half of entrepreneurs migrate back to their home in particular to take local comparative advantages. Rural entrepreneurs are also more likely to obtain financial support from family members, friends and local banks to start a business.
    Date: 2009–07–27
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genres:13095&r=hrm
  10. By: Hensen Maud M.; Vries M. Robert de; Cörvers Frank (ROA rm)
    Abstract: In this article we investigate the relationship between geographic mobility andeducation-job mismatch in the Netherlands. We focus on the role of geographicmobility in reducing the probability of graduates working (i) jobs below theireducation level; (ii) jobs outside their study fi eld; (iii) part-time jobs; (iv) fl exiblejobs; or (v) jobs paid below the wage expected at the beginning of the career. For thispurpose we use data on secondary and higher vocational education graduates in theperiod 1996–2001. We show that graduates who are mobile have higher probabilityof fi nding jobs at the acquired education level than those who are not. Moreover,mobile graduates have higher probability of fi nding full-time or permanent jobs.Th is suggests that mobility is sought to prevent not only having to take a job belowthe acquired education level, but also other education-job mismatches; graduates arespatially fl exible particularly to ensure full-time jobs.
    Keywords: education, training and the labour market;
    Date: 2009
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:umaror:2009012&r=hrm
  11. By: Paulo Brito (ISEG - Technical University of Lisbon, UECE - UECE); Alain Venditti (GREQAM - Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille - Université de la Méditerranée - Aix-Marseille II - Université Paul Cézanne - Aix-Marseille III - Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales - CNRS : UMR6579)
    Abstract: In this paper we consider a two-sector endogenous growth model where the productions of the final good and human capital require economy-wide external effects. Assuming constant returns to scale at the private and social levels, we show that local and global indeterminacy of equilibrium paths are compatible with any values for the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption and any sign for the capital intensity difference across the two sectors.
    Keywords: Two-sector model, endogenous growth, economy-wide externalities, local and global indeterminacy
    Date: 2009–07–28
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00408018_v1&r=hrm
  12. By: Md. Rabiul Islam
    Abstract: In the line of Schumpeterian fully endogenous growth theory, this study attempts to investigate whether differences in research intensity as well as absorptive capacity help to explain cross-country differences in productivity growth in a panel of 55 sample countries including 23 OECD and 32 developing economies over the period 1970 to 2004. Using several indicators of innovative activity and product variety empirical results from system GMM estimator confirm that research intensity has significant positive effect on productivity growth in both the OECD and developing countries. TFP growth is also found to be enhanced by the distance to technology frontier in both the group of countries. R&D based absorptive capacity seems to have significant positive impact on productivity growth in both the groups though strong in OECD countries. Human capital based technology transfer is found significant and robust in both the OECD and developing countries. Absorptive capacity appears to be sensitive to the model specification and measurement of innovative activity as well as product variety.
    Keywords: Schumpeterian growth theory, R&D intensity, TFP growth, technology transfer, human capital, absorptive capacity, system GMM, OECD, developing countries
    JEL: O10 O30 O47
    Date: 2009–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mos:moswps:2009-13&r=hrm
  13. By: Niebuhr, Annekatrin (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]); Granato, Nadia (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]); Haas, Anette (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]); Hamann, Silke (Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany])
    Abstract: "Differences in regional labour market conditions are still pronounced in Germany, especially between the Eastern and the Western part. Traditional neoclassical models imply that labour mobility should reduce disparities. In contrast, models that include externalities or selective migration suggest that regional differences might well increase due to interregional migration of workers. We investigate the impact of labour mobility on regional disparities in Germany between 1995 and 2005. Considering the impact of migration as well as commuting, effects on regional wages and unemployment are estimated. Our results suggest that labour mobility tends to reduce disparities; however, we find significant effects only on unemployment dispari-ties." (Autorenreferat, IAB-Doku)
    JEL: C23 J61 R23
    Date: 2009–07–30
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iab:iabdpa:200915&r=hrm
  14. By: Mina Baliamoune
    Abstract: We analyze the interplay of political elites’ de facto power, democracy and education based on a theoretical framework inspired by the model in Acemoglu and Robinson (2006). We identify conditions under which the elite may overcompensate the loss of de jure power (as a result of political reform) by investing too much in de facto power so that the probability to have de facto power is higher under democracy than under non-democracy. The analysis also shows that depending on whether the income effect of education is strong or weak and whether citizens’ education has increasing or decreasing returns, the elite may or may not support education subsidy under democracy. We show that under certain assumptions the political elites may treat democracy and spending on citizens’ education as substitutes. We comment on the implications of the results for understanding why countries that started from comparable initial conditions may follow divergent development paths.
    Date: 2009–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:icr:wpicer:18-2009&r=hrm
  15. By: Utz Weitzel (Utrecht University); Diemo Urbig (Max Planck Institute of Economics); Sameeksha Desai (University of Missouri Kansas City); Zoltan Acs (George Mason University); Mark Sanders (Utrecht University)
    Abstract: Talent allocation models assume that entrepreneurial talent is selfish and thus allocates into unproductive or even destructive activities if these offer the highest private returns. This paper experimentally analyzes other-regarding preferences of entrepreneurial talent. We find that making a distinction between creative talent and business talent explains systematic differences in other-regarding behavior. Generally, business talent is less willing, and creative talent more willing, to forego private payoffs to avoid losses to others. A moderator analysis reveals that uncreative business talent is significantly less other-regarding than creative business talent, a finding applicable to both certain and risky payoffs with and without negative externalities. The paper makes a contribution to entrepreneurship research by qualifying the implications of talent allocation models and discovering the importance of distinguishing between the two types of entrepreneurial talent. We also add to the field of experimental economics by advancing research on social preferences under risk and with negative externalities.
    Keywords: Social preference, entrepreneurship, experiment
    JEL: C91 D62 D64 L26
    Date: 2009–08–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2009-066&r=hrm

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