'The books should. . . . be bought by every university library. The research reported here is important, the exposition is lucid, the sequencing of chapters is sensible and the retrospective aspect of the volumes provides a fascinating insight into the working methods of one of the great economists of our time.' - Geraint Johnes, International Journal of Manpower Studies in Human Capital, the first volume of Jacob Mincer's essays to be published in this series, assesses the impact of education and job training on wage growth. It offers an authoritative study of the effects of human capital investments on labor turnover and the impact of technological change on human capital formation.
Although much has been written to encourage organizations to treat employees as assets, this book argues persuasively for recognizing the worker as the investor. Davenport underscores a fundamental reality of the workplace: work is a two-way exchange of value, not a one-way exploitation of an asset by its owner. Offering a fresh new lens for viewing the realities of today's workplace, this book accurately captures the look of the new employee/employer relationship and the best practices for hiring, developing, and preserving a first-class workforce. Davenport's ideas bring together the key notions of human resources, conflict resolution, and management. He then demonstrates how to put into action the employment practices that provide the employer with organizational value and the employee with a satisfying return on his or her investment.
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.
This volume honours the contributions Claudia Goldin has made to scholarship and teaching in economic history and labour economics. The chapters address some closely integrated issues: the role of human capital in the long-term development of the American economy, trends in fertility and marriage, and women's participation in economic change.
This book provides a careful historical analysis of the co-evolution of educational attainment and the wage structure in the United States through the twentieth century. The authors propose that the twentieth century was not only the American Century but also the Human Capital Century. That is, the American educational system is what made America the richest nation in the world. Its educational system had always been less elite than that of most European nations. By 1900 the U.S. had begun to educate its masses at the secondary level, not just in the primary schools that had remarkable success in the nineteenth century. The book argues that technological change, education, and inequality have been involved in a kind of race. During the first eight decades of the twentieth century, the increase of educated workers was higher than the demand for them. This had the effect of boosting income for most people and lowering inequality. However, the reverse has been true since about 1980. This educational slowdown was accompanied by rising inequality. The authors discuss the complex reasons for this, and what might be done to ameliorate it.
A diverse array of factors may influence both earnings and consumption; however, this work primarily focuses on the impact of investments in human capital upon an individual's potential earnings and psychic income. For this study, investments in human capital include such factors as educational level, on-the-job skills training, health care, migration, and consideration of issues regarding regional prices and income. Taking into account varying cultures and political regimes, the research indicates that economic earnings tend to be positively correlated to education and skill level. Additionally, studies indicate an inverse correlation between education and unemployment. Presents a theoretical overview of the types of human capital and the impact of investment in human capital on earnings and rates of return. Then utilizes empirical data and research to analyze the theoretical issues related to investment in human capital, specifically formal education. Considered are such issues as costs and returns of investments, and social and private gains of individuals. The research compares and contrasts these factors based upon both education and skill level. Areas of future research are identified, including further analysis of issues regarding social gains and differing levels of success across different regions and countries. (AKP).
Human capital theory, or the notion that there is a direct relationship between educational investment and individual and national prosperity, has dominated public policy on education and labor for the past fifty years. In The Death of Human Capital?, Phillip Brown, Hugh Lauder, and Sin Yi Cheung argue that the human capital story is one of false promise: investing in learning isn't the road to higher earnings and national prosperity. Rather than abandoning human capital theory, however, the authors redefine human capital in an age of smart machines. They present a new human capital theory that rejects the view that automation and AI will result in the end of waged work, but see the fundamental problem as a lack of quality jobs offering interesting, worthwhile, and rewarding opportunities. A controversial challenge to the reigning ideology, The Death of Human Capital? connects with a growing sense that capitalism is in crisis, felt by students and the wider workforce, shows what's at stake in the new human capital while offering hope for the future.
In 1965, a family-reunification policy for admitting immigrants to the United States replaced a system that chose immigrants based on their national origin. With this change, a 40-year hiatus in Asian immigration ended. Today, over three-quarters of US immigrants originate from Asia and Latin America. Two issues that dominate discussions of US immigration policy are the progress of post-reform immigrants and their contributions to the US economy. This book focuses on the earnings and human capital investment of Asian immigrants to the US after 1965. In addition, it provides a primer on studying immigrant economic assimilation, by explaining economists’ methodology to measure immigrant earnings growth and the challenges with this approach. The book also illustrates strategies to more fully use census data such as how to measure family income and how to use “panel data” that is embedded in the census. The book is a historical study as well as an extremely timely work from a policy angle. The passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act set the United States apart among economically developed countries due to the weight given to family unification. Based on analyses by economists—which suggest that the quality of immigrants to the US fell after the 1965 law—policymakers have called for fundamental changes in the US system to align it with the immigration systems of other countries. This book offers an alternative view point by proposing a richer model that incorporates investments in human capital by immigrants and their families. It challenges the conventional model in three ways: First, it views the decline in immigrants’ entry earnings after 1965 as due to investment in human capital, not to permanently lower “quality.” Second, it adds human capital investment and earnings growth after entry to the model. And finally, by taking investments by family members into account, it challenges the policy recommendation that immigrants should be selected for their occupational qualifications rather than family connections.
In Kids These Days, early Wall Street occupier Malcolm Harris gets real about why the Millennial generation has been wrongly stereotyped, and dares us to confront and take charge of the consequences now that we are grown up. Millennials have been stereotyped as lazy, entitled, narcissistic, and immature. We've gotten so used to sloppy generational analysis filled with dumb clichés about young people that we've lost sight of what really unites Millennials. Namely: We are the most educated and hardworking generation in American history. We poured historic and insane amounts of time and money into preparing ourselves for the 21st-century labor market. We have been taught to consider working for free (homework, internships) a privilege for our own benefit. We are poorer, more medicated, and more precariously employed than our parents, grandparents, even our great grandparents, with less of a social safety net to boot. Kids These Days is about why. In brilliant, crackling prose, early Wall Street occupier Malcolm Harris gets mercilessly real about our maligned birth cohort. Examining trends like runaway student debt, the rise of the intern, mass incarceration, social media, and more, Harris gives us a portrait of what it means to be young in America today that will wake you up and piss you off. Millennials were the first generation raised explicitly as investments, Harris argues, and in Kids These Days he dares us to confront and take charge of the consequences now that we are grown up.
The work world is changing faster than ever before. Adapting to this new reality without a significant interruption in results is increasingly a top priority for all businesses. The key to thriving through disruption is understanding and practicing human capital strategies that will drive enterprise performance and value-creation. In Humanizing Human Capital, renowned business thought leaders Solange Charas, PhD, and Stela Lupushor reframe traditional HR practices into a future-forward strategy to optimize human capital. Charas and Lupushor shift decision-making about people from a gut sense to an evidence-based approach—a critical and much-needed departure from the cross-your-fingers-and-hope-for-the-best approach of most traditional HR programs today. Humanizing Human Capital reveals a step-by-step method to apply analytics approaches to human capital while anticipating inevitable changes in the workforce landscape. This will enable human capital professionals to generate positive outcomes for all stakeholders and allow management to make decisions that work for the entire enterprise. With this book’s comparison of “traditional” with the “future-forward” approach to human capital management, case studies, real-world situations, and 20 business principles, you will learn to: Adopt a best-evidence versus best-practice approach to decision making Shift your thinking so that you view human capital as a crucial investment rather than as a sunk cost Identify what needs to change to respond to future pressures and apply critical thinking to create workable solutions Balance human capital analytics with the more human-centric elements of people management Equip yourself with approaches and tools to interpret the collective voice of the workforce Utilize methods to measure and optimize human capital efficiency, increasing your ROI Increase value for all key stakeholders, including investors, management, workers, customers, partners, and the community at large The road ahead may seem unpredictable and even treacherous, but Humanizing Human Capital provides leaders of any organization a new framework to create resilient, responsive, and innovative organizations with tangible and sustainable business results.
