Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

A Wage Based Measure of Aggregate Human Capital

Contents:

Author Info

  • João Cerejeira

    ()

Abstract

The role of the accumulation of human capital to per capita income growth has been sharply debated among economists and policy makers. One open question of this debate is how to measure human capital. The standard approach is to use the average years of education of the labour force or the school enrolment rates as proxies for the stock of human capital. However, formal schooling achievement does not fully capture all the human capital stock. In fact, other forms of human capital accumulation are unmeasured. Also, it is assumed that the productivity differentials among workers with different levels of schooling are proportional to their years of education. In order to solve these problems, we develop the Mulligan and Sala-i-Martin’s measure of human capital based, on labour income. This measure has some nice properties: is consistent with variable elasticities of substitution across types of workers, and does not impose all workers with the same amount of education to have the same amount of skill. It is also allowed for changes in the relative productivities over time and across different economies. We compute the index at the firm level and, finally, and we compare the evolution of our index with the evolution of average years of education for the Portuguese regions, highlighting the shortcomings of the latter measure of human capital. Keywords: Human capital, wages, income based measures JEL Classification: E24, J24, I21

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www-sre.wu-wien.ac.at/ersa/ersaconfs/ersa04/PDF/245.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by European Regional Science Association in its series ERSA conference papers with number ersa04p245.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: Aug 2004
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa04p245

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Augasse 2-6, 1090 Vienna, Austria
Web page: http://www.ersa.org

Related research

Keywords:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Mulligan, Casey B & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1995. "A Labour-Income-Based Measure of the Value of Human Capital: An Application to the States of the United States," CEPR Discussion Papers 1146, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  2. Mulligan, Casey B & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 2000. " Measuring Aggregate Human Capital," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 215-52, September.
  3. Romer, Paul M, 1990. "Endogenous Technological Change," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(5), pages S71-102, October.
  4. Pritchett, Lant, 1996. "Where has all the education gone?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1581, The World Bank.
  5. Mankiw, N Gregory & Romer, David & Weil, David N, 1992. "A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 107(2), pages 407-37, May.
  6. Benhabib, Jess & Spiegel, Mark M., 1994. "The role of human capital in economic development evidence from aggregate cross-country data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 143-173, October.
  7. Jonathan Temple, 1999. "The New Growth Evidence," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(1), pages 112-156, March.
  8. Kalaitzidakis, Pantelis, et al, 2001. " Measures of Human Capital and Nonlinearities in Economic Growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 229-54, September.
  9. Cardoso, Ana Rute, 1998. "Earnings Inequality in Portugal: High and Rising?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 44(3), pages 325-43, September.
  10. Lucas, Robert Jr., 1988. "On the mechanics of economic development," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 3-42, July.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa04p245

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Gunther Maier).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.