The Human Capital Stock: A Generalized Approach

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Jones, Benjamin F.
• 署名单位: Northwestern University; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.104.11.3752
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 3752-3777
• 关键词: self-selection; international migration; INEQUALITY; ECONOMICS; MIGRANTS; return

摘要

This paper reconsiders the traditional approach to human capital measurement in the study of cross-country income differences. Within a broader class of neoclassical human capital aggregators, traditional accounting is found to be a theoretical lower bound on human capital differences across economies. Implementing a generalized accounting empirically illustrates the possibility that capital variation may now account (even fully) for the large income variation between rich and poor countries. These findings reject the constraints on human capital variation that traditional accounting has imposed.