Individual Human Capital Research Articles

Human Capital Spill-Overs within the Workplace

An individual's human capital has a strong influence on earnings. Yet individual, worker-level estimations of earnings rarely include the characteristics of co-workers or detailed firm-level controls. In this paper, we use a unique matched worker's workplace dataset to estimate the effect on own earnings of co-workers' education. Our results, using the 1998 UK Workplace Employee Relations Survey, show significant effects. Own earnings premia fall slightly, but there is an independent, significantly positive effect from average workplace education. We also test for interactions between own and co-worker education levels. However, these interactions appear negative: education is valued less highly at workplaces where education levels are already high. This result runs counter to our theoretical prediction.

Empirical Evidence on Human Capital Spillovers

This paper examines whether the average level of human capital in a region affects the earnings of an individual residing in that region in a manner that is external to the individual's own human capital. I find little evidence of an external effect of human capital, which suggests that human capital spillovers of the form postulated by the new growth literature are unlikely to matter much in practice.

Acquiring new knowledge: The role of retaining human capital in acquisitions of high-tech firms

Many acquisitions of high-tech firms are motivated by the acquirers' desire to enhance their strategic technological capabilities. However, these capabilities are likely to be embedded to a large degree in the tacit and socially complex knowledge of the acquired firms' individual and collective human capital. This presents a dilemma for acquirers because, unlike tangible or financial assets, the acquired firms' valuable human assets cannot be purchased or owned outright and they can leave the firm at any time. Retention therefore is likely to be of central importance during acquisition implementation in knowledge-intensive firms. Using data from a sample of acquisitions in high-technology industries, the results of this study confirm that retention of specific types of human capital is critical for determining the success of the acquirers' efforts to gain valuable new technological capabilities. Applying the theory of relative standing to predict post-acquisition retention, we find that autonomy, status, and commitment significantly affect retention, but economic incentives do not. We discuss and integrate these results in the context of knowledge-based views of the firm and the existing literature on acquisition implementation.

Determinants of Employment of Recently Arrived Mexican Immigrant Wives

Women are playing an increasing role in Mexican immigrant flows to the United States and are becoming more involved in the Mexican immigrant workforce in this country. Unfortunately, relatively little attention has been paid to their post-immigration labor market experiences. This study, based on data from the 1990 Public-Use Microdata Sample (PUMS), focuses on a multilevel analysis of the determinants of employment among married Mexican-origin women who immigrated to the United States in the 1980s. The analytical model incorporates the individual wife's human capital, family household resources, and the areal structural labor market conditions that describe the local labor environment. From this model, nine hypotheses are derived and examined through logistic regression. The results provide support for all but two of the hypotheses.

Early Failure in the Labor Market: Childhood and Adolescent Predictors of Unemployment in the Transition to Adulthood

The authors investigate the childhood and adolescent predictors of youth unemployment in a longitudinal study of young adults who have been studied for the 21 years since their births in 1972-1973. They test hypotheses about the predictors of youth unemployment using information about each individual's human capital, social capital, and personal capital. In the human capital domain, lack of high-school qualifications, poor reading skills, low IQ scores, and limited parental resources significantly increased the risk of unemployment. In the social capital domain, growing up in a single-parent family, family conflict, and lack of attachment to school also increased the risk of unemployment. In the personal capital domain, children involved in antisocial behavior had an increased risk of unemployment. These predictors of unemployment reached back to early childhood, suggesting that they began to shape labor-market outcomes years before these youths entered the work force. In addition, these effects remained significant after controlling for the duration of education and educational attainment, suggesting that many early personal and family characteristics affect labor-market outcomes, not only because they restrict the accumulation of human capital (e.g., education), but also because they directly affect labor-market behaviors. Failure to account for prior social, psychological, and economic risk factors may lead to inflated estimates of the effects of unemployment on future outcomes

Efficient equilibrium convergence: Heterogeneity and growth

An endogenous growth model arising from task specialization is used to examine the effects of differing initial human capital distributions. Two macroeconomic phenomena are produced: income convergence and leapfrogging of living standards. Income convergence occurs for all countries in the same market, arising from diminishing returns to individual human capital. Leapfrogging occurs by comparing countries in two separate markets. Income leapfrogging can occur because the stationary growth rate increases with market size, and human capital heterogeneity reduces growth. The introduction of coordination costs of task assignment can produce gains in welfare and growth from human capital heterogeneity.

GENDER AND MEDICAL INSURANCE:

This research investigates gender differences in employer-sponsored medical insurance coverage among full-time male and female workers in the United States and assesses the relevance of human capital theory and its compensating differentials corollary in predicting coverage. Data are analyzed from a subsample of the Quality of Employment Survey, a national probability sample of workers in the United States. Results indicate that men were more likely to have medical insurance coverage from their employers than were women; however, gender differences were minimized in a multivariate context when human capital and structural variables were controlled. Furthermore, human capital variables are, overall, weak predictors of whether both women and men received coverage. More generally, the data suggest that structural conditions of the occupation, rather than individual human capital, may be most relevant for future research.