人力资本投资理论研究新进展

人力资本投资理论是人力资本理论和新经济增长理论分析的基本问题，它关注的是人力资本的最优投资决策，本质上是投资效率问题。传统人力资本投资理论主要从微观上对个人投资决策进行分析，而现代人力资本投资理论则从微观与宏观相结合的角度对个人动态投资行为进行竞争性均衡的社会福利比较。本文旨在从基本方法和研究思路上对现代人力资本投资理论进行比较分析。     

人力资本视野中的养老保险困局

人力资本是经济增长的内在源泉,养老保险制度的产生和发展受社会经济制约,同时,养老保险制度也对人力资本等经济增长的要素产生重要影响,完善的养老保险制度可以促进人力资本积累,提高劳动生产率。我国养老保险制度还有不健全之处,抑制了人力资本的积累,主要体现在退休年龄偏低、制度覆盖面窄和养老保险关系便携性差。文章从这三个方面提出原则性的政策建议。     

人力资本投资与可持续发展

“可持续发展”的提出使资本的概念拓展到生态和环境领域,形成了可持续发展的资本观。人力资本的自身特点决定了他在经济可持续发展中起着举足轻重的作用。我国要实现经济可持续发展,必须采取有效措施,加强人力资本投资。     

论人力资本投资对经济增长的作用

人力资本理论认为，人力资本是一种特殊的具有主观能动性的资源，是促进经济增长的强大推动力，对现代高新技术产业的发展和经济增长起着决定性的作用。因此，我们要充分重视人力资本，重视人力资本的形成和积累。人力资本的形成主要在教育，教育投资是人力资本形成的关键。     

人力资本的投资风险研究

影响公司或企业持续发展的因素中,除了必要的生产成本,还有一个最重要的因素就是人力资本。人在生产经营过程中创造价值是不容置疑的,很多人却忽略了人力资本投资的风险性,本文就人力资本作为一种投资也会带来收益和风险进行了分析。     

我国农村人力资本投资探析——基于舒尔茨的人力资本理论视角

舒尔茨的人力资本理论改变了传统的经济增长思维模式,注重通过对人力资本的投资推进对传统农业的改造,促进经济的增长。文章根据我国农村劳动力人力资本低下的现状,运用人力资本理论提出相应的对策。     

农村人力资本投资与新农村建设

农村人力资本投资不足，人力资本存量水平过低，已经成为制约我国新农村建设的瓶颈。当前，增加农村人力资本投资，主要在于加大农村教育经费投入，提高农民收入水平，解决不利于农村人力资本投资的限制因素。     

人力资本属性与投资决定

80年代兴起的新经济增长理论的研究指出,离开了人力资本,在宏观层面,我们无法解释各国经济绩效的巨大差异;在微观层面,我们无法解释各企业经济绩效的巨大差异。这表明,人力资本同物质资本、技术等一样,是非常重要的生产要素。但是,这种生产要素又与其它要素不同,具有自身属性。     

Controlling endogenous fluctuations of human capital investment in an OLG economy

A bifurcation occurs when there is a sudden qualitative or topological change in the behavior of the original system by varying one or more parameters (the bifurcation parameters) of the original system. Bifurcation can cause unacceptable new conditions or instability in the economy system. Its control is done by designing a controller input, thereby achieving desirable dynamical behavior. This paper deals with the control of a bifurcation caused by a rise in information costs in a human capital investment model. By employing the delayed feedback control (DFC) method, unstable fluctuations stemming from the system can be controlled without changing its original properties. In addition, we show the effectiveness and feasibility of the developed methods in the system with explicit functions.     

农村人力资本高等教育投资的影响因素探析

高等教育阶段,影响农村人力资本投资的因素很多,包括农村居民收入的低水平循环增长、教育机会的不均等、农村家庭高等教育投资与收益的不对称和农村人力资本高等教育收益率较低等。     

Population and economic growth with human and physical capital investments

We present a two-sector endogenous growth model with human and physical capital accumulation to analyze the long-run relationship between population growth and real per capita income growth. Formal education and investment in physical capital are assumed to be two separate components of human capital production. Along the balanced growth path equilibrium, population change may have a positive, negative, or else neutral effect on economic growth depending on whether physical and human capital are complementary/substitutes for each other in the formation of new human capital and on their degree of complementarity.

Human–capital investment and the wage gap

Summary. According to empirical studies, the wage differential by skills evolved non–monotonically in the past decades although the relative supply of skilled labor steadily increased. The present paper provides a theoretical explanation for this finding. In our setting, technological change intertemporally alters the human–capital investment incentives of heterogeneous individuals. As a consequence of changing incentives, the time path of the relative wage is U–shaped while there is a rise in the share of skilled workers. Received: November 28, 2000; revised version: January 30, 2001     

Learning investment and industrial diversity in urban growth

This paper studies an urban growth model where learning through personal contacts could be more effective in a denser locale, whereas the effectiveness of learning through impersonal means of communications depends principally on the technology of communications rather than on the locale in which learning takes place. As a result of advances in communications technology, cities would be larger, and workers would spent more time on learning through personal contacts but may cut time on impersonal learning if the two kinds of learning investment are complements. Otherwise, cities could become smaller, while workers would spend more time on impersonal learning at the expense of time on learning through personal contacts. In a multi-sector economy, urban industrial diversity tends to increase or fall together with city size.     

Growth and social security: the role of human capital

This paper studies the growth and efficiency effects of pay-as-you-go financed social security when human capital is the engine of growth. Employing a variant of the Lucas model [Lucas, R.E., 1988. On the mechanics of economic development. Journal of Monetary Economics 22, 3–42.] with overlapping generations, it is shown that a properly designed, unfunded social security system leads to higher output growth than a fully funded one. Furthermore, the economy with an unfunded social security is efficient, while the other one is not. These results stand in sharp contrast to those obtained in models where the reason for economic growth is physical capital accumulation.     

Migration, human capital accumulation and economic development

We study how the possibility of migration changes the composition of human capital in sending countries, and how this affects development. In our model, growth is driven by productivity growth, which occurs via imitation or innovation. Both activities use the same types of skilled labour as input, albeit with different intensities. Heterogenous agents accumulate skills in response to economic incentives. Migration distorts these incentives, and the accumulation of human capital. This slows down, or even hinders, economic development. The effect is stronger, the farther away the country is from the technological frontier.     

Growth and human capital: good data,good results

We present a new data set for years of schooling across countries for the 1960–2000 period. The series are constructed from the OECD database on educational attainment and from surveys published by UNESCO. Two features that improve the quality of our data with respect to other series, particularly for series in first-differences, are the use of surveys based on uniform classification systems of education over time, and an intensified use of information by age groups. As a result of the improvement in quality, these new series can be used as a direct substitute for Barro and Lee’s (2001; Oxford Economic Papers, 3, 541–563) data in empirical research. In standard cross-country growth regressions we find that our series yield significant coefficients for schooling. In panel data estimates our series are also significant even when the regressions account for the accumulation of physical capital. Moreover, the estimated macro return is consistent with those reported in labour studies. These results differ from the typical findings of the earlier literature and are a consequence of the reduction in measurement error in the series.      

The role of human and social capital in growth: extending our understanding

Human capital, institutions and social capital are now all recognisedas significant factors of growth. They have largely been studiedseparately, and although they present sufficient common characteristicsto be conceptualised as one main category distinct from physicalcapital, it may still be more important to focus on the linksbetween their specific sub-categories. Direct links with incomemay be spurious, as there appears to be a ‘web of associations’between the sub-categories, which would benefit from furtherempirical investigation. This paper reviews the literature onhuman capital, institutions and social capital, extracting threesub-categories of human capital (human skills capital, stock-of-knowledgeand entrepreneurship) and two of social capital (low- and high-rationalisation).Specific areas are then suggested for further empirical study.     

Growth, distance to frontier and composition of human capital

We examine the contribution of human capital to economy-wide technological improvements through the two channels of innovation and imitation. We develop a theoretical model showing that skilled labor has a higher growth-enhancing effect closer to the technological frontier under the reasonable assumption that innovation is a relatively more skill-intensive activity than imitation. Also, we provide evidence in favor of this prediction using a panel dataset covering 19 OECD countries between 1960 and 2000 and explain why previous empirical research had found no positive relationship between initial schooling level and subsequent growth in rich countries.