Human Capital Investment Decisions Research Articles

Board of director characteristics and corporate labour investment efficiency: empirical evidence from European-listed firms

Purpose Prior work has shown that the board of directors can alleviate market imperfections that lead to capital investment inefficiency. The authors extend previous work by exploring how board characteristics influence the efficiency of human capital investment, a critical production factor that has remained insufficiently examined. Specifically, this study aims to investigate how board activity, size, the presence of a separate chairman, female directors and board independence affect firm labour investment efficiency in the European context. Design/methodology/approach The sample contains 4,331 firm-year observations traded on the STOXX® Europe 600 index from 2009 through 2022. This paper applies a lagged ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to test the proposed hypotheses. It also uses a dynamic panel generalised method of moments (GMM) regression to tackle potential endogeneity concerns. Findings The results show that board gender diversity and the level of independent directors are positively linked to labour investment efficiency, whereas board size and meeting frequency are negatively related to labour investment efficiency. Meanwhile, the presence of a separate chairman on the board does not appear to be significantly associated with labour investment efficiency. In additional subgroup analyses, the authors find that board gender diversity mitigates managers’ inclinations towards both overinvestment and underinvestment in labour. The authors also find that the level of independent directors helps greatly in reducing the underinvestment in labour, while it fails to attenuate the overinvestment in labour. Moreover, the authors find board size to be significantly associated with the tendency to make suboptimal labour decisions, manifesting as both overinvestment and underinvestment in labour. Finally, the results show that board meetings are significantly associated with overinvestment problems, while underinvestment problems seem to be unrelated to meeting frequency. Practical implications The empirical results have implications for policymakers and market participants in Europe. Firstly, firms may improve the efficiency of their labour investments by increasing directors’ independence and adding more female voices to corporate boards. Secondly, the evidence shows that some board attributes, such as board activity and size, do not necessarily have a beneficial impact on corporate decisions, particularly labour investment decisions. Finally, market participants are likely to benefit from this paper by understanding the role of board attributes in promoting the efficient allocation of firm resources. Originality/value This paper makes two significant contributions. Firstly, it extends the literature on the role of boards of directors in shaping corporate decision-making processes, particularly concerning human capital investment decisions within European firms. By doing so, the authors provide new evidence confirming that certain board attributes, such as board size, director independence and board gender diversity, are important for optimising firms’ resource allocation. Secondly, although numerous studies investigate boards’ role in capital investment decisions, relatively few empirical studies exist on the role of boards in labour investment decisions. This paper, therefore, tries to tackle this void in the literature by investigating firms’ decision-making concerning labour investments.

Jövőbiztos készségek – Várhatóan mire lesz szükség a jövő munkahelyein?

Advances in Artificial Intelligence and robotics have made it possible to automate many high-level cognitive skills, but different jobs and occupations may be affected differently by technological developments. High-skilled occupations are less at risk of automation, as they also require skills and competences that remain important bottlenecks to automation. However, according to OECD 2022 results, the jobs most at risk from automation will not disappear completely, as only 18-27% of the skills and competences required in these occupations are highly automatable. Rather, it is likely that the organisation of work will need to be radically changed and that workers in these jobs will need to retrain as technology replaces workers in many tasks. In my study, I aim to summarise, based on the literature of recent years, the key skills that will potentially equip workers for the diverse workplace demands of the near future, arising from technological developments. I conducted a keyword search of the Scopus database for future jobs, workplaces, occupations, skills, abilities and competences. I narrowed down the search results to the period 2021-2023, English language journal articles, economic and business fields and relevant keywords associated with the articles by the authors. In addition to these articles, I also reviewed the reporting materials of other relevant professional organisations (OECD, World Economic Forum) for the period. The geographical, regional and territorial differentiation of the studies was taken into account. In my findings, I have also discussed the role of universities and other educational institutions in meeting the employability expectations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution in order to ensure that they can provide skills that are as relevant as possible to market expectations. I will highlight the top 69 skills identified in the hospitality industry and their groupings, and the elements of the 4 important skill groups identified for accountancy professionals. I also cover the future-proof skills that entrepreneurs are expected to have. In general, I will describe the appreciation of soft skills based on the academic findings of recent years. The results collected can also serve as useful information for individual human capital investment decisions, organisational training and even the design of training frameworks for educational institutions.

The Effect of Wages on Human Capital and its Virtuous Dynamic Cycle

This paper provides economic theory with a dynamic structural model that mathematically proves both a positive effect of wages on the workers’ human capital intertemporal investment decisions and the existence of a virtuous dynamic cycle between wages and human capital.Among the desired characteristics of the proposed model is that it has an analytical solution, permitting the achievement of an optimal decision rule for each choice variable and the calibration of its parameters using observed data; this favors an easy implementation by policymakers and researchers. The constructed statistics and the results of the empirical application of the model, to the Mexican developing economy, support the mathematical conclusions. The model predicts two benchmark human capital gross returns and their corresponding wages, by levels of education. Below the second one, human capital coming from formal education vanishes over time, due to investment not being enough to offset its depreciation; below the first one, workers stop investing in education. Unfortunately, around 40% and 20% of Mexican workers are located below them, respectively.

Micro-Household Human Capital Investment Decisions and a Simulation Study from the Intergenerational Conflict Perspective.

Education is highly valued in Asian families. However, as family members age, competition for intra-family resources affects children's actualization in the family, which impacts the family's future capital. However, most existing studies have interpreted the family's intergenerational conflicts in terms of care services for older adults, and few have analyzed and simulated intra-family competition based on the intergenerational conflict. This study introduces a multi-agent simulation approach to observe micro-households' educational investment choices under the dual pressures of retirement and childcare. This measure captures households' investment choices and provides a decision basis for given households. Using data from the China Family Panel Study for 2014, 2016, and 2018, we explore the impact of these dual pressures on household educational expenditures and their differences across urban and rural areas, household aging, and income samples. We also simulated the micro-households' investment choices under these dual pressures to observe that these pressures reduce investments in educational human capital in these "sandwich-like" households. The simulation results suggest that households with high childcare stress invest more in education than those with a high retirement burden. Moreover, income growth can mitigate the dual stress "crowding-out" effect on education, which is most pronounced in low-income, high childcare-stress households.

Patience, Risk-Taking, and Human Capital Investment Across Countries

Abstract Patience and risk-taking—two preference components that steer intertemporal decision-making—are fundamental to human capital investment decisions. To understand how they contribute to international skill differences, we combine Programme for International Student Assessment tests with the Global Preference Survey. We find that opposing effects of patience (positive) and risk-taking (negative) together account for two-thirds of the cross-country variation in student skills. In an identification strategy addressing unobserved residence country features, we find similar results when assigning migrant students their country-of-origin preferences in models with residence country fixed effects. Associations of national preferences with family and school inputs suggest that both may act as channels.

Human Capital resource as cost or investment: A market-based analysis

This study empirically investigates the myopic behavior of the stock market toward firms’ human capital resource investment, paying particular attention to two key proxies: human resource expenditure and the firm value added allocated to the employees. Focusing on human capital resource investment decisions’ alignment with near versus longer-term emphasis by investors, we examine firms listed in the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 over a five-year period using an established accounting-based valuation model. Our results show that human capital investment discourse leads to overweighting of the forecasted longer-term earnings in the apportionment of share price constituents, suggesting that investors consider investment in employees to generate more return in the longer-term. Additionally, our findings prove that investors respond to firm level human capital resource as an investment generating more return in the longer-term. This emphasises the importance of communicating human capital resource investment information that accurately reflects the firm value creation via employees in external financial reporting.

Capital Structure Impact On The Human Capital Investment: Eastern European Countries Case

Among growth factors of a company, its human capital, because of its hardly imitable trait. However, investing in human capital is intangible and risky, which makes its funding arduous. This article considered the impact of the company’s capital structure on the human capital investment decision through training using probit regressions. Among a sample of SMEs from 24 Eastern European countries, the results confirmed that bank loans foster trainings. However, an increase in self-financing slows down such investments.

Demographic transition, human capital and economic growth in China

We assess the impact of demographic changes on human capital accumulation and aggregate output using an overlapping generations model with endogenous savings and human capital investment decisions. We focus on China as it has experienced rapid changes in demographics as well as human capital levels between 1970 and 2010. Additionally, further variations in demographics are expected due to the recently introduced two-child policy. Model simulations indicate that education shares and income per capita will be lower with a fertility rebound as compared to status quo fertility. We find education policy to be effective in mitigating these adverse outcomes associated with higher fertility. While long-run declines in output per capita can be offset by a 4.7% increase in the government education budget, it requires a 28% increase to achieve the same outcome in the short run.

Human Capital Investment for Adolescents: Barriers and Opportunities

The decision to attend college is a question of human capital investment, yet resources to help practitioners frame human capital investment decisions remain elusive and few include the “gold standard” of finance: net present value (NPV). Can one discuss human capital investment with an average adolescent using a traditional NPV approach? Motivated by this question, we presented 10 barriers to maximizing education–career NPV (e.g., clarity of costs, immature adolescent brains, individual discount rates). We outline an iterative, research-based approach to education–career investment, including framing the conversation, calculating paired NPVs, and structuring the decision. This multistep framework leverages practitioner expertise to help adolescents consider important lifelong financial wellness implications of human capital investment.

O Brother, Where Start Thou? Sibling Spillovers on College and Major Choice in Four Countries

AbstractFamily and social networks are widely believed to influence important life decisions, but causal identification of those effects is notoriously challenging. Using data from Chile, Croatia, Sweden, and the United States, we study within-family spillovers in college and major choice across a variety of national contexts. Exploiting college-specific admissions thresholds that directly affect older but not younger siblings’ college options, we show that in all four countries a meaningful portion of younger siblings follow their older sibling to the same college or college-major combination. Older siblings are followed regardless of whether their target and counterfactual options have large, small, or even negative differences in quality. Spillover effects disappear, however, if the older sibling drops out of college, suggesting that older siblings’ college experiences matter. That siblings influence important human capital investment decisions across such varied contexts suggests that our findings are not an artifact of particular institutional detail but a more generalizable description of human behavior. Causal links between the postsecondary paths of close peers may partly explain persistent college enrollment inequalities between social groups, and this suggests that interventions to improve college access may have multiplier effects.

Human Capital Investment for Adolescents: Barriers and Opportunities

The decision to attend college is a question of human capital investment, yet resources to help practitioners frame human capital investment decisions remain elusive and few include the “gold standard” of finance: Net Present Value (NPV). Can one discuss human capital investment with an average adolescent using a traditional NPV approach? Motivated by this question, we presented 10 barriers to maximizing education-career NPV (e.g., clarity of costs, immature adolescent brains, individual discount rates, etc.). We outline an iterative, research-based approach to education-career investment, including framing the conversation, calculating paired NPVs, and structuring the decision. This multi-step framework leverages practitioner expertise to help adolescents consider important lifelong financial wellness implications of human capital investment.

Navigating Risky Higher Education Investments: Implications for Practitioners and Consumers

This exploratory study examines academic and labor market risks associated with investments in higher education by synthesizing the literature regarding risky higher education choices and extending the research using the 2014 National Student Financial Wellness Study, a national sample of college students. Three phenomena are analyzed to support the notion that individuals may be making suboptimal human capital investment decisions: (a) cost–benefit errors; (b) unclear educational goals; and (c) increasing time-to-degree. The study examines which students are more likely to report that the cost of college did not influence their choice, that tuition is not a good investment, or that they expect to take additional time to complete their degree. Opportunities for practitioners to help clients navigate higher education investment decisions and opportunities for future research are discussed.

Promotion Signaling and Human Capital Investments

In a world characterized by asymmetric learning, promotions can serve as signals of worker ability, and this, in turn, can result in inefficient promotion decisions. If the labor market is competitive, the result will be practices that reduce this distortion. We explore how this logic affects human capital investment decisions. We show that, if commitment is possible, investments will be biased toward the accumulation of firm-specific human capital. We also consider what happens when commitment is not possible and show a number of results including that, if investment choices are not publicly observable, choices are frequently efficient. (JEL D82, J24, J31, M12, M51)

Culture and Student Achievement: The Intertwined Roles of Patience and Risk-Taking

Patience and risk-taking – two cultural traits that steer intertemporal decision-making – are fundamental to human capital investment decisions. To understand how they contribute to international differences in student achievement, we combine PISA tests with the Global Preference Survey. We find that opposing effects of patience (positive) and risk-taking (negative) together account for two-thirds of the cross-country variation in student achievement. In an identification strategy addressing unobserved residence-country features, we find similar results when assigning migrant students their country-of-origin cultural traits in models with residence-country fixed effects. Associations of culture with family and school inputs suggest that both may act as channels.

Culture and Student Achievement: The Intertwined Roles of Patience and Risk-Taking

Patience and risk-taking – two cultural traits that steer intertemporal decision-making – are fundamental to human capital investment decisions. To understand how they contribute to international differences in student achievement, we combine PISA tests with the Global Preference Survey. We find that opposing effects of patience (positive) and risk-taking (negative) together account for two-thirds of the cross-country variation in student achievement. In an identification strategy addressing unobserved residence-country features, we find similar results when assigning migrant students their country-of-origin cultural traits in models with residence-country fixed effects. Associations of culture with family and school inputs suggest that both may act as channels.

To College, Or Not To College: An Individualized Approach to Human Capital Investment

The decision to attend college is a question of human capital investment. However, resources to help practitioners frame human capital investment decisions remain elusive and few include the “gold standard” of finance: Net Present Value (NPV). Can one discuss human capital investment with an average adolescent using a traditional NPV approach? Motivated by this question, we presented 10 barriers to maximizing education-career NPV (e.g., clarity of costs, immature adolescent brains, individual discount rates, etc.). We outline an iterative, research-based approach to education-career investment, including: framing the conversation; calculating paired NPVs, and structuring the decision. This multi-step framework leverages practitioner expertise to help adolescents consider the lifelong financial wellness implications of human capital investment.

Occupation aspirations, education investment, and cognitive outcomes: Evidence from Indian adolescents

Abstract The occupation aspirations of adolescents play an important role in their human capital investment decisions. This paper provides new empirical evidence of a non-linear relationship between the size of an adolescent’s aspirations gap and human capital as a young adult. The adolescent aspirations gap is quantified as the difference between the wages associated with their occupation aspiration and the wages associated with their parent’s occupation. Higher aspirations at age 12 are correlated with higher human capital levels at age 19, up to a point. Above this inflection point the relationship plateaus and human capital levels no longer increase. Children with the largest aspiration gaps have lower human capital levels than those with more moderate gaps. This empirical result provides evidence for the theoretical prediction that aspirations that are ahead, but not too far ahead, provide the best incentives for investment. Examining potential mechanisms, I provide suggestive evidence that age 12 aspirations influence age 19 human capital levels through the child’s time investment in education, long-term orientation, and agency but not the level of household education expenditure.

Beyond the average: Ethnic capital heterogeneity and intergenerational transmission of education

Estimating the effect of ethnic capital on human capital investment decisions is complicated by the endogeneity of immigrants’ location choice, unobserved local correlates and the reflection problem. We exploit the institutional setting of a rare immigrant settlement policy in Germany, that generates quasi-random assignment across regions, and identify the causal impact of heterogeneous ethnic capital on educational outcomes of children. Correcting for endogenous location choice and correlated unobservables, we find that children of low-educated parents benefit significantly from the presence of high-educated parental peers of the same ethnicity. High educated parental peers from other ethnicities do not influence children’s learning achievements. Our estimates are unlikely to be confounded by the reflection problem since we study the effects of parental peers’ human capital which is pre-determined with respect to children’s outcomes. Our findings further suggest an increase in parental aspirations as a possible mechanism driving the heterogeneous ethnic capital effects, implying that profiling peers or ethnic role models could be important for migrant integration policies.

Framing the Human Capital Investment Decision: Examining Gender Bias in Student Loan Borrowing

Recent literature suggests that the persistent gender wage gap, joined with a larger proportion of student loan debt, reduces the financial benefits of a college degree for women. Grounded in the theory of human capital and behavioral finance, this study investigates gender differences in student loan decisions using an experimental survey design with the online data collection. Participants (n = 1926) were randomly assigned to a treatment scenario about whether to enter college or the workforce that was manipulated by attribute frames of a gain, loss, or aspiration and varied by the gender of the character in a hypothetical scenario. The attribute frames did not influence the evaluation of student loan decisions. No significant gender differences were found in the evaluation of student loan borrowing or the experimental treatment scenarios, suggesting societal movement towards more gender-neutral attitudes regarding student loan borrowing and degree-seeking motivations.

Post-Secondary Student Choices and the Labour Shortage in Canada’s Information and Communication Technology Sector

Employers in Canada’s information and communication technology (ICT) sector often claim that they face a shortage of technical talent. This shortage may arise in part from a sharp decline in undergraduate engineering and computing enrolment and graduation rates in Canada beginning in 2002. Even with a recent reversal in enrolment trends, the number of graduates in these fields remains well below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average. In this article, we discuss the trade-offs inherent in numerous policies and programs that have been considered in Canada to increase the supply of new graduates in these fields. We suggest that many existing programs are easy to implement and short term in nature but may also have unintended consequences by altering human capital investment decisions. Moreover, many existing policies create incentives that lead to different responses depending on student gender, thereby making it hard to simultaneously reduce labour shortages and boost gender equality in the ICT workforce. We summarize evidence from the economics of higher education literature on student major choice to point to alternative, more long-term policies and programs in which students can learn about their preferences and ability.