Human Capital The Structure Of Production And Growth

This book provides an in-depth investigation of the link between human capital and economic growth. The authors take an innovative approach, examining the determinants of economic growth through a historical overview of the concept of human capital. The text fosters a deep understanding of the connection between human capital and economic growth through the exploration of different theoretical approaches, a review of the literature, and the application of nonlinear estimation techniques to a comprehensive data set. The authors discuss nonparametric econometric techniques and their application to estimating nonlinearities—which has emerged as one of the most salient features of empirical work in modeling the human capital-growth relationship, and the process of economic growth in general. By delving into the topic from theoretical and empirical standpoints, this book offers an insightful new view that will be extremely useful for scholars, students, and policy makers.

The role of human capital has diversified considerably in the last 100 years. Today, the prevailing perception seeks a sustainable, integrated development which is based on the triptych of environment, economy, and society. In this mode of development, human capital has a positive effect on the economy, on social cohesion and optimal governance, as well as on the ecological footprint. This book studies the critical role of human capital in the Greek economy and its production structure. In doing so, this book analyzes the Greek labor market, employment, and structural changes, among other facets of this vibrant economy.

This paper analyzes the impact of human capital on growth, on the basis of refined calculations of human capital, and with a focus on West Africa. Using a growth-accounting methodology, it distinguishes the sources of growth between the accumulation of factors of production and changes in production intensity or efficiency. Private capital is found to be particularly important to growth, but human capital appears not to be significant. The paper also identifies the terms of trade, trade openness, the government deficit, and the share of government investment in total investment as key policy variables affecting growth.

This edited collection explores the links between human capital (both in the form of health and in the form of education), demographic change, and economic growth. Using empirical as well as theoretical perspectives, the authors investigate several important issues in the context of human capital, namely population ageing, inequality, public policy, and long-term economic development. Ultimately, they demonstrate that the accumulation of human capital is of crucial importance to long-run economic growth.

This qualitative case study of an American manufacturing organization describes the barriers which limited its ability to receive maximum return on its investment for training and development resources invested in their human assets. Changing global economics have forced organizations to the realization that their competitive advantage lies in developing and tapping into their human assets or human capital. Professionals, managers, human resource development specialists, and academicians alike have developed theories supporting the systematic development of human assets to improve performance and achieve organizational business goals. This book examines how one organization, typically described as a High Performance Organization, attempted to put theory into application. Specifically, the book examines the concepts of needs assessment, systems theory, organization development, human capital theory, and performance improvement. The results find a systemic failure in human asset development initiatives rooted in the failure to view the organization as a whole, systematically assess performance, and involve the entire organization in designing and implementing a holistic approach to improving performance and developing the organizations human assets. Specifically, inefficient organizational structure and lack of clearly defined business goals were significant barriers to the systematic development of their human assets.

The past few decades have seen a revolutionary increase in interest in the economic role of education and training at the societal, business, and individual levels. This is mainly due to the strong post-war growth in industrialized economies, which has been driven by rapid technological progress and far-reaching structural change and, in the end, has resulted in increasingly skill-intensive production and growing demandfor more educated labour. Today it is frequently argued that with the increasing importance of the role of know-how, the workforce has become the most important single input in the production process. Simultaneously the dramatic increase in the availability of large micro-Ievel databases has opened enormous possibilities to study the economic role of human capital creation also empirically. The economic perspective of human capital accumulation is, however, of utmost importance also in times of deep economic recession. Periods of economic slowdown and rapidly increasing unemployment tend to in crease the demandfor advanced education and training in particular. This brings up, in turn, questions regarding overeducation and satisfying both private and social retums on investments in human capital.

The empirical literature on the contributions of human capital investments to economic growth shows mixed results. While evidence from OECD countries demonstrates that human capital accumulation is associated with growth accelerations, the substantial efforts of developing countries to improve access to and quality of education, as a means for skill accumulation, did not translate into higher income per capita. In this Element, we propose a framework, building on the principles of 'growth diagnostics', to enable practitioners to determine whether human capital investments are a priority for a country's growth strategy. We then discuss and exemplify different tests to diagnose human capital in a place, drawing on the Harvard Growth Lab's experience in different development context, and discuss various policy options to address skill shortages.