Human Capital Gap Research Articles

Leveraging innovation and global value chains participation for industrialization: An agenda for research in Africa

This paper examines the intricate relationship between innovation and Global Value Chain (GVC) participation, with a focus on Africa's increased integration into global networks. The study underscores the importance of National Innovation Systems (NIS) in fostering technological advancements and highlights the potential of GVCs to drive industrialization in African countries. Despite challenges like inadequate R&D infrastructure, limited financing, and human capital gaps, African nations have opportunities to leverage innovation for improved GVC integration. Using a systematic search and review methodology, the paper critically evaluates existing literature on innovation and GVCs, drawing lessons for Africa for improved GVC integration. It identifies key themes related to innovation, GVCs, and industrialization, emphasizing the role of both government and firms in facilitating successful GVC participation. The study suggests that strategic government interventions, such as coherent industrial policies and investment in quality infrastructure, are essential for GVC integration. Additionally, it advocates for African firms to adopt proactive strategies, including technology upgrading and export activities, to enhance their competitiveness in global markets. The paper concludes by highlighting the need for cross-border collaboration and regional integration to strengthen innovation capabilities and support sustained economic growth in Africa.

Supporting Women-Led Businesses: Narrative Review of Recent Causal Evidence

Abstract Innovative women entrepreneurs can be agents of change and offer novel solutions to global challenges. However, they face multiple barriers to growing their businesses. I review the literature on strategies to support women entrepreneurs in improving their business outcomes. I focus on interventions designed to address four areas of constraints that influence their decisions and can impact their business performance: gaps in human capital, access to finance, access to technology and markets, and contextual factors such as legal and regulatory constraints, social norms, access to care, and gender-based violence. I conclude that evidence of modest average treatment effects and heterogeneity in treatment effects across various interventions suggests the need for more precise targeting. The multiple constraints faced by women entrepreneurs necessitates testing different packages of interventions. Moreover, the successful implementation and adoption of proposed solutions require consideration of the contextual constraints that differentially affect women-led businesses. While I highlight several interventions that show promise in supporting women entrepreneurs, significant gaps remain in the evidence concerning the most effective strategies.

Children’s time allocation and the socioeconomic gap in human capital

Children’s time investments in various activities may be important for reducing socioeconomic status (SES) gaps in educational and mental health outcomes. Using detailed time use diaries of Australian children aged 4–14, we observe that children from low SES backgrounds spend more time on digital media and less time on out-of-school enrichment activities, organised or for leisure. We explain the SES gap by employing a human capital development panel model and find that this difference contributes about 3% to the observed SES gap in numeracy skills. The results are supported by exogeneity tests and numerous robustness checks. The contribution is larger for males, older age groups, and if the cumulative effect on learning is considered. No clear results are found for literacy skills and mental health outcomes. The findings imply that interventions promoting a shift away from digital media towards out-of-school enrichment activities could help reduce the SES gap in human capital.

Climate-related Disaster and Human Capital Investment in the Global South — Household Heterogeneity and Growth

This study develops a dynamic model of climate-related disaster impacts, considering multidimensional household heterogeneity, for analyzing changes in growth and inequality in low-income countries. Focusing on human capital development, the study demonstrates the multiple impacts of disaster risk reduction (DRR) policies on human capital investment, including the effect of schooling opportunities for households constrained by the subsistence consumption constraint. Through numerical simulations performed for two economies that differ in terms of human capital, modeled after Madagascar and Fiji, it is illustrated that the possibilities of involuntary unemployment and the work-learning choice drive the diversity in macroeconomic impacts of a disaster. In an economy characterized by low levels of human capital, a disaster could cause an increase in labor supply in the immediate aftermath but interrupt human capital formation, impeding long-term growth and human capital formation. Such a result contradicts prevailing intuition by demonstrating that a disaster occurring in an economy under recession may not result in a large adverse GDP impact in the short run but may negatively impact growth in the long run. On such a path, a policy of development in DRR infrastructure with appropriate taxation could reduce human-capital gaps in the long run by supporting continued post-disaster human-capital-investment opportunities for the poor.

A Call for Volunteers to Confront What We Do Not Know About Tipping Points – The Next Biggest Challenge for Climate Science

Climate scientists, especially those with earth and environmental experience, have been extremely successful in expanding the scope of detection and attribution (D&A) analyses of “know uncertainties) about climate variables that include much more than increases in temperature and some changes in precipitation patterns. They have been favored in those endeavores by some well supported and widely accepted laws of physics with which to anchor their models. Today in the first quarter of 2024, though, they cannot rest on their laurels. A new more difficult task awaits their collective and integrated attention. They need to collectively confront the prospects of large and dangerous tipping points about which, to be honest, we know very little. Our understanding of how, when, and where those thresholds lie and why they even exist is woefully inadequate to support the clamor in many locations for near-term abating and adapting actions supported by enough knowledge to make society confident that their proposed actions will actually work. We need another large concerted research effort, perhaps mimicking their D&A work but perhaps not, designed to advance knowledge in the same was as before in less time than before without accepted fundamental laws of physics as before; they are now confronting “known unknowns” without clear quantification of the inherent uncertainties. This effort will confront two profound budget constraints – limited and vulnerable funding to cover the expense without interruption and a large influx of new and motivated science talent to fill the human capital gap (the current crop of scientists already have too much to do with too little funding). Fundamentally, this perspective piece is a plea designed to motivate the next cohort of climate scientists to pick up the mantle with the promise of support, colleagueship, respect, recognition, mentoring, and life-long friendships.

Flooding the Brains: Natural Disasters, Student Outcomes, and the Urban-Rural Gap in Human Capital

Flooding the Brains: Natural Disasters, Student Outcomes, and the Urban-Rural Gap in Human Capital

Guangxi's Primary and Non-Primary Cities: Wage Gap, Human Capital Gap and Economic Gap

Based on the panel data of 14 cities in Guangxi(China) from 2004 to 2021, a two-way fixed effect model is established to analyze the effects of wage gap and human capital gap on the economic gap between non-primary and primary cities. The results found that both the wage gap and the human capital gap have a significant positive impact on the economic gap between cities in general; regional heterogeneity tests show that some cities have a significant impact on the economic gap in terms of the wage gap and the human capital gap, while others do not; there is a positive moderating effect of industrial structure upgrading on the relationship between wage gap and economic gap. Based on this, non-primary cities should pay attention to the synergy between economic development and wage income improvement; actively create good development opportunities and enhance the ability to attract talents; improve self-development ability through industrial upgrading and opening up to the outside world.

Research on the Impact of Digital Empowerment on China’s Human Capital Accumulation and Human Capital Gap between Urban and Rural Areas

Human capital is a key factor in the economic growth and sustainable development of a country. However, the impact of digitalization on human capital accumulation and the urban-rural human capital gap in China is seldom a focus in the literature. This paper establishes a three-sector economic growth model surrounding knowledge accumulation, endogenous technology, and labor mobility. It is designed to theoretically explain the influence of digital empowerment on human capital accumulation and its urban-rural gap in an economy. An empirical test is also conducted using CFPS panel data for 25 Chinese provinces from 2016 to 2018. The results show that: Firstly, digital empowerment significantly promotes the accumulation of human capital in rural and urban areas. The number of years of education increases by 1.37% in rural areas and 3.07% in urban areas for each index point of digitalization increase. Secondly, the impact of digitalization on the human capital gap between urban and rural areas demonstrates an inverted U-shaped curve. However, it is still within the Matthew Effect that the human capital gap between urban and rural areas is widening in tandem with digital development. Finally, the Matthew Effect in digitalization on the urban-rural human capital gap is relatively larger in the female group, higher education population, and larger family size.

Forecast of Advanced Human Capital Gap Based on PSO-BP Neural Network and Coordination Pathway: Example of Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Region

The upgrading of human capital caused by education is significant to regional development. Reasonable predictions of the degree of advanced human capital in different regions are effective for formulating reasonable talent policies and accelerating regional coordinated development. The BP neural network is a widely used prediction technology. PSO-BP neural network has good global search ability, which can accelerate the convergence speed of traditional BP neural network, which is suitable for forecasting larger data. The study takes the provincial data of China from 2005 to 2019 as an example, using PSO-BP neural network algorithm to predict the advanced level of human capital through the influencing factors filtered by OLS regression. The results show that: (1) Innovation ability and urbanization can play a decisive role in advanced human capital filtered by OLS regression; (2) The results of predicting the development trend of advanced human capital in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region in 2020–2025 through the PSO-BP neural network have showed that there is still a large gap between the senior human capital stock in Hebei-Beijing-Tianjin in terms of total and per capita in 2020–2025 compared with other regions in east of China; (3) Giving full attention to elaborate the positive role of economic quality and quantity development are suitable for narrowing the difference of advanced human capital in this region. Through the method of OLS-BP-neural network, this study explores the gap and influencing factors of the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region, excavates the reasons for the huge gradient difference in the development of this region, and extends the machine learning prediction method to the analysis of the advanced level of human capital and the research of narrowing the regional development gap.

A Stall Only on the Surface? Working Hours and the Persistence of the Gender Wage Gap in Western Germany 1985–2014

AbstractTo what extent has the closing of the gender gap in hourly wages (‘gender wage gap’; GWG) in Western Germany stalled due to an increasing supply of non-standard working hours? We use descriptive trend analyses and Juhn–Murphy–Pierce decompositions of German Socio-Economic Panel data for the last 30 years (1985–2014) to analyse the extent to which the expansion of part-time and marginal work, as well as overwork, may have contributed to the dynamics of the GWG in Western Germany. We find that the large increase in part-time work among women in combination with increasing wage gaps between part-time and full-time work substantially widened the GWG (by about one-sixth). Working hour effects were large enough to offset the equalizing effects of declining gender gaps in human capital, and they existed even in the public sector. In contrast to the United States, trends in overwork did not have a meaningful impact on the GWG. In an add-on, we find a widening of the gender gap in monthly earnings, but also an important closing of the gender earnings gap unconditional on employment due to an increased labour supply of women. Our results suggest that working hours should be given more consideration in research on family–work conflict and gender earnings inequalities.

Human capital dynamics in China: Evidence from a club convergence approach

This paper investigates the evolution of human capital in China for 31 provinces over the period of 1985–2016 from a club convergence perspective. Per capita human capital stocks, estimated using the Jorgenson–Fraumeni lifetime income approach, are for the first time examined within a non-linear latent factor framework that allows to model a wide range of transition dynamics for each province along the path to convergence. The study finds no overall convergence between provinces in China, however, the results strongly support the existence of multiple convergence clubs. While a small group of provinces are converging toward the highest levels of human capital, most of the other provinces are failing to catch up and form separate clusters that converge to lower equilibria. These regional patterns provide new evidence on the increasing human capital gap between Chinese provinces, posing a significant challenge to a more inclusive and harmonious human and economic development.

Regional gap in human capital: determinants of education and urbanization

This paper studies the regional gap in human capital. Specifically, it focuses on the important determinants of this capital represented by such key factors as education and urbanization. We stress the importance of human capital for the economic growth and show how it can be important for the effective development of both urban and rural areas. This study examines the regional distribution and dynamics of human capital. Human capital is credited with a crucial role in the creation of economic growth. Additionally, we investigate how the exposure to the urban or rural environment affects the educational success of people worldwide. In addition, our paper studies the effects of migration on urbanization and education. Our results show that institutional factors can be a good proxy for explaining the relationship between human capital development and urbanization. Furthermore, it can be concluded that return to education is higher in urban areas compared to rural areas, and higher in highly educated cities compared to smaller towns. All of these creates some important implications for urbanization and education that can be used by the policy-makers and urban and rural planners for narrowing the regional gap in human capital and increasing the overall well-being and economic growth.

Conceptualizing the Role of Leadership Strategy in the Context of Strategic Management Process: A Review of Literature

A focus on the nature of strategic management process and its contribution to answer fundamental question of how firms achieve sustainable competitive advantage and improved performance through use of suitable leadership has led to organizational leaders formulating strategies through approaches that are systematic, rational as well as logical to strategic choices at corporate, business and functional levels. This has continued to be a major milestone in strategic management process in establishing a clear strategy that makes an organization competitive through suitable management of its workforce and application of strategies that are not easily imitated. This calls for an appropriate leadership strategy aimed at eliminating the gap in human capital that exists in various levels of strategic management process in an organization between the current and desired state of leadership in the future that will address the organization deficiencies by considering the right number of leaders required by the firm for the next at least 5 years with required leadership qualities, skills, behaviour, team capabilities and appropriate culture. This study has focused on a comprehensive review of conceptual and theoretical literature that brings out the role of leadership strategy in the context of strategic management process that leads to improved organizational performance. The concept of organizational capabilities and organization context were found to play a relevant role that mediate and moderate this relationship respectively. The study has proposed a suitable theoretical framework that links leadership strategy, organizational capabilities, and context and organization performance based on the identified gaps for guiding future research on leadership strategy. Six theories including; Pasmore model as lead theory, Path-Goal theory, Contingency theory, transformational leadership, Resource based view and Upper echelon theory underpinned the study in understanding the constructs. In summary, based on the reviewed literature, the study on leadership strategy is found critical for organization success and this calls for further testable empirical data and analysis to validate this claim.

Early-Stage Venture Incubation and Mentoring Promote Learning, Scaling, and Profitability Among Disadvantaged Entrepreneurs

Socially and educationally disadvantaged entrepreneurs often lack the knowledge and prior experience to develop and scale their businesses. Owing to limited educational and employment opportunities, poverty, and discrimination, these entrepreneurs frequently experience low business growth and performance. What factors influence the effectiveness of early-stage venture incubation and mentoring for promoting learning, scaling, and profitability among these entrepreneurs? Two studies in a business incubator serving low-income, underprivileged entrepreneurs in South Africa evaluate this question. Study 1 uses a matched, two-period case-control design to investigate the effects of incubation on business growth by comparing selected and incubated companies to similar also-selected but not incubated ones. The findings show that incubated companies grew 22% more in revenue and 15% more in employment than not incubated companies over the six months between applying to and graduating from the incubator. Study 2 uses instrumental-variable models to evaluate the role that mentoring played in improving business performance by analyzing data from seven cohorts of participants in the incubator randomly assigned to mentors. The findings show that participants assigned to high-ability (versus low-ability) mentors had 3.2% higher revenue and 3.5% higher profits one year after incubation. Further, the benefits of being mentored were more significant for businesses whose entrepreneurs had less pre-entry knowledge and experience, suggesting that mentoring supplemented gaps in human capital. These findings have implications for ways to support disadvantaged entrepreneurs and their businesses through mentoring and early-stage venture incubation.

A \u201cSilent Revolution\u201d: school reforms and Italy\u2019s educational gender gap in the Liberal Age (1861\u20131921)

This paper explores the evolution of the human capital gender gap in Liberal Italy (1871–1921). First, we show that Italy lagged some 50 years behind more advanced countries like France, Prussia and the UK, and that the regional divide in gendered literacy was unparalleled in the rest of Europe. Next, we test whether the shift to primary-school centralization in 1911 (the Daneo-Credaro Reform) brought about a decisive improvement in female literacy. We rely on a brand new, cross-sectional micro (municipal)-dataset of literacy rates in 1911 and 1921, as well as their potential determinants around 1911. Such data, combined with propensity score matching to improve identification, show that primary-school centralization increased the average annual growth of female literacy by 0.78 percentage points. Thus, even though the Reform did not aim at girls specifically, it brought about the unintended consequences of more rapid human capital accumulation for women and—ceteris paribus—a reduced educational gender gap. We briefly discuss why this “Silent Revolution” likely had important implications for Italy’s economic history.

Regional distribution and dynamics of human capital in China 1985–2014

This study investigates the regional distribution and dynamics of human capital in China. We develop a new comprehensive human capital measure based on the Jorgenson-Fraumeni (J-F) lifetime income framework, in addition to using the traditional education-based human capital measures. We find that the new J-F human capital measure reflects more closely the regional economic disparity than the education-based measures. We also conduct a Divisia decomposition analysis to investigate the contributions of different factors to the quantity and quality growth of human capital and to regional disparity. Our results show that the regional human capital gaps in China are enlarging in general. Education and urbanization contribute most to human capital growth, while population aging shows a strong negative effect. Our estimates create a new provincial level human capital panel dataset from 1985 to 2014, which is useful for empirical work and policy analysis.

Human capital gaps in vaccine development: an issue for global vaccine development and global health.

Despite the success of vaccines in reducing the morbidity and mortality associated with infectious diseases, many infectious diseases, both newly emerging and well known, lack vaccines. The global capability for beginning-to-end vaccine development has become limited, primarily owing to a scarcity of human capital necessary to guide the development of novel vaccines from the laboratory to the marketplace. Here, we identify and discuss the gaps in human capital necessary for robust vaccine development and make recommendations to begin to address these deficiencies.

Could trends in time children spend with parents help explain the black–white gap in human capital? Evidence from the American Time Use Survey

ABSTRACTIt is widely believed that the time children spend with parents significantly impacts human capital formation. If time varies significantly between black and white children, this may help explain the large racial gap in test scores and wages. In this study, I use data from the American Time Use Survey to examine the patterns in the time black and white children receive from mothers at each age between birth and age 14 years. I relate patterns in parenting time to trends in human capital formation observed in the literature. I observe that black children spend significantly less time with their mothers than white children in the first years of life. However, differences in parenting time rapidly decline with age and there are never significant differences in teaching time after socioeconomic variables are controlled. My findings suggest that the black–white human capital gap is unlikely to be driven by differences in teaching time or differences in parenting time after children enter school.

Economic Growth and Human Capital in the Post-Knowledge Era: A Focus on Positive Externalities and Spillover Effects of Knowledge in Italy and the Emergency of the Less Developed Areas

The growth of learning and knowledge of a nation has been quantified in different ways, including country’s absorptive capacity to store information, to internalize knowledge, to invest in innovation and to transfer of technology in its area. In the context of the post-knowledge era, this paper estimates a growth panel data model in exploring the role of R&D s and human capital in regional economic growth and income convergence. The aim is double. On the one hand, to analyze the Italian ability for catching-up with more advanced nations, such as Germany. On the other hand, to explain divergent levels of regional growth behavior, focusing on one of the less developed regions and reducing the effects of spatial contagion of knowledge networks and innovation system: Sicily. The results reveal a lower gap in human capital between Sicily and the whole of the country than that in terms of innovation.

The relative importance of total factor productivity and factors of production in income per worker: Evidence from the Brazilian states

Income per worker gap in different regions of Brazil is stunning. To assess the relative importance of factor of production and total factor productivity (TFP) in those income per worker disparities, development accounting exercises were carried out for the 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010 years. In 1970, both types of capital stocks and TPF gaps were associated with the Brazilian states lower relative income in comparison to Sao Paulo state. Over the decades up to the year 2000, the Brazilian states have experienced a relevant capital deepening process, which account for income per work catching-up. However, the TFP gaps in relation to the reference state remain almost stable and their reduction is fundamental to the maintenance of the Brazilians states income per worker catching-up process. The conclusions remain similar when the analysis is conducted by means of distinct proxies of physical capital. When considering the human capital qualitative aspect, we noticed a greater human capital gap among the Brazilian states in relation to Sao Paulo State and, as a consequence, a reduction in the TFP relative gap.