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On-the-Job Human Capital Accumulation in a Real Business Cycle Model: Implications for Intertemporal Substitution Elasticity and Labor Hoarding

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  • Daehaeng Kim

    (International Monetary Fund)

  • Chul-In Lee

    (SungKyunKwan University)

Abstract

A substantial fraction of a worker's time at work goes to acquiring human capital. This paper explicitly considers on-the-job human capital accumulation from the perspective of time invested for acquiring skills and learning by doing in an RBC model and shows that the inability to account for human capital accumulation leads to a substantial bias in conventional estimates of intertemporal substitution elasticity. Our main results are based on the standard intuition that the opportunity cost of time invested in acquiring human capital moves procyclically, so that on-the-job time invested in acquiring human capital is "counter-cyclical." Furthermore, the true wage rate becomes less procyclical, while production hours become more procyclical than total hours at work. The overall results can be viewed as providing a micro foundation for labor hoarding models without adjustment costs. (Copyright: Elsevier)

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File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2007.04.003
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Bibliographic Info

Article provided by Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics in its journal Review of Economic Dynamics.

Volume (Year): 10 (2007)
Issue (Month): 3 (July)
Pages: 494-518

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Handle: RePEc:red:issued:06-16

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Related research

Keywords: Intertemporal substitution; Human capital investment; Business cycle; Labor hoarding;

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References

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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Konstantinos Angelopoulos & Jim Malley & Apostolis Philippopoulos, 2008. "Welfare Implications of Public Education Spending Rules," CESifo Working Paper Series 2510, CESifo Group Munich.
  2. Burgess, Stephen & Fernandez-Corugedo, Emilio & Groth, Charlotta & Harrison, Richard & Monti, Francesca & Theodoridis, Konstantinos & Waldron, Matt, 2013. "The Bank of England's forecasting platform: COMPASS, MAPS, EASE and the suite of models," Bank of England working papers 471, Bank of England.
  3. Facundo Sepulveda & Fabio Mendez, 2011. "The cyclicality of skill acquisition: evidence from panel data," CAMA Working Papers 2011-13, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
  4. Jim Malley & Ulrich Woitek, 2009. "Productivity Shocks and Aggregate Cycles in an Estimated Endogenous Growth Model," CESifo Working Paper Series 2672, CESifo Group Munich.
  5. Angelopoulos, Konstantinos & Malley, Jim & Philippopoulos, Apostolis, 2011. "The welfare implications of resource allocation policies under uncertainty: The case of public education spending," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 176-192, June.
  6. Keqiang Hou & Alok Johri, 2009. "Intangible Capital, Corporate Earnings and the Business Cycle," Department of Economics Working Papers 2009-17, McMaster University.
  7. Kegiang Hou & Alok Johri, 2013. "Intangible Capital and the Excess Volatility of Aggregate Profits," Department of Economics Working Papers 2013-04, McMaster University.

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