IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/zewdip/13108.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Return and risk of human capital contracts

Author

Listed:
  • Kroencke, Tim A.
  • Muehler, Grit
  • Sprietsma, Maresa

Abstract

Human capital contracts give private investors the right to share of students' future earnings in return for a financial contribution during their studies. Although still rarely used, human capital contracts could not only help to completement limited public funding for higher education but might also be an alternative to traditional financial assets. Using a dataset covering 1% of German households for the period 1995-2009, we analyse the return and risk properties that can be expected from human capital contracts. We find that funds of human capital contracts provide low risk exposures to stocks and bonds. As a result, risk-adjusted returns of funds of human capital contracts are signicantly positive under fairly weak conditions. Thus, human capital contracts potentially offer large diversification benefits for investors and might be a way to improve the state's educational budget

Suggested Citation

  • Kroencke, Tim A. & Muehler, Grit & Sprietsma, Maresa, 2013. "Return and risk of human capital contracts," ZEW Discussion Papers 13-108, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:13108
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/88602/1/774678135.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Huberman, Gur & Kandel, Shmuel, 1987. "Mean-Variance Spanning," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(4), pages 873-888, September.
    2. He, Hua & Modest, David M, 1995. "Market Frictions and Consumption-Based Asset Pricing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(1), pages 94-117, February.
    3. Fama, Eugene F. & Schwert, G. William, 1977. "Human capital and capital market equilibrium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 95-125, January.
    4. repec:hoo:wpaper:e-97-3 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. DeRoon, Frans A. & Nijman, Theo E., 2001. "Testing for mean-variance spanning: a survey," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 111-155, May.
    6. John Lintner, 1965. "Security Prices, Risk, And Maximal Gains From Diversification," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 20(4), pages 587-615, December.
    7. Driessen, Joost & Lin, Tse-Chun & Phalippou, Ludovic, 2012. "A New Method to Estimate Risk and Return of Nontraded Assets from Cash Flows: The Case of Private Equity Funds," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(3), pages 511-535, June.
    8. Hansen, Lars Peter & Jagannathan, Ravi, 1991. "Implications of Security Market Data for Models of Dynamic Economies," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(2), pages 225-262, April.
    9. Campbell, John Y, 1996. "Understanding Risk and Return," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(2), pages 298-345, April.
    10. Alexander Ludwig & Dirk Krüger & Axel Börsch-Supan, 2009. "Demographic Change, Relative Factor Prices, International Capital Flows, and Their Differential Effects on the Welfare of Generations," NBER Chapters, in: Social Security Policy in a Changing Environment, pages 385-414, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Nijman, T.E. & de Roon, F.A., 2001. "Testing for mean-variance spanning : A survey," Other publications TiSEM 0159f80a-c61b-4519-b004-a, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    12. Luttmer, Erzo G J, 1996. "Asset Pricing in Economies with Frictions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(6), pages 1439-1467, November.
    13. William F. Sharpe, 1964. "Capital Asset Prices: A Theory Of Market Equilibrium Under Conditions Of Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 19(3), pages 425-442, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christiansen, Charlotte & Joensen, Juanna Schroter & Nielsen, Helena Skyt, 2007. "The risk-return trade-off in human capital investment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(6), pages 971-986, December.
    2. Kroencke, Tim A. & Schindler, Felix, 2012. "International diversification with securitized real estate and the veiling glare from currency risk," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(7), pages 1851-1866.
    3. Enrique Sentana, 2009. "The econometrics of mean-variance efficiency tests: a survey," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 12(3), pages 65-101, November.
    4. Fletcher, Jonathan, 2018. "An empirical examination of the diversification benefits of U.K. international equity closed-end funds," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 23-34.
    5. Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, 2001. "An Empirical Analysis of the Risk Properties of Human Capital Returns," Working Papers 2001-10, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    6. Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, 2003. "An Empirical Analysis of the Risk Properties of Human Capital Returns," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(3), pages 948-964, June.
    7. Peñaranda, Francisco & Sentana, Enrique, 2012. "Spanning tests in return and stochastic discount factor mean–variance frontiers: A unifying approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 170(2), pages 303-324.
    8. Martin Lettau & Sydney Ludvigson, 2001. "Resurrecting the (C)CAPM: A Cross-Sectional Test When Risk Premia Are Time-Varying," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(6), pages 1238-1287, December.
    9. Glabadanidis, Paskalis, 2009. "Measuring the economic significance of mean-variance spanning," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 596-616, May.
    10. Galvani, Valentina & Plourde, André, 2013. "Spanning with futures contracts," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 61-72.
    11. Marie Brière & Bastien Drut & Valérie Mignon & Kim Oosterlinck & Ariane Szafarz, 2013. "Is the Market Portfolio Efficient? A New Test of Mean-Variance Efficiency when all Assets are Risky," Finance, Presses universitaires de Grenoble, vol. 34(1), pages 7-41.
    12. Raymond Kan & Guofu Zhou, 2012. "Tests of Mean-Variance Spanning," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 13(1), pages 139-187, May.
    13. Cheol S. Eun & Sandy Lai & Frans A. de Roon & Zhe Zhang, 2010. "International Diversification with Factor Funds," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(9), pages 1500-1518, September.
    14. Marie Brière & Bastien Drut & Valérie Mignon & Kim Oosterlinck & Ariane Szafarz, 2011. "Is the Market Portfolio Efficient? A New Test to Revisit the Roll (1977) versus Levy and Roll (2010) Controversy," Working Papers hal-04140988, HAL.
    15. Hanno Lustig, 2004. "Housing Collateral, Consumption Insurance and Risk Premia: an Empirical Perspective (joint with Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh), forthcoming Journal of Finance," UCLA Economics Online Papers 300, UCLA Department of Economics.
    16. repec:dau:papers:123456789/9297 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Balduzzi, Pierluigi & Robotti, Cesare, 2010. "Asset pricing models and economic risk premia: A decomposition," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 54-80, January.
    18. Galvani, Valentina & Plourde, André, 2010. "Portfolio diversification in energy markets," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 257-268, March.
    19. Beaulieu, Marie-Claude & Dufour, Jean-Marie & Khalaf, Lynda, 2010. "Asset-pricing anomalies and spanning: Multivariate and multifactor tests with heavy-tailed distributions," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 763-782, September.
    20. Sydney Ludvigson, 2008. "The Research Agenda: Sydney Ludvigson on Empirical Evaluation of Economic Theories of Risk Premia," EconomicDynamics Newsletter, Review of Economic Dynamics, vol. 9(2), April.
    21. Sermin Gungor & Richard Luger, 2016. "Multivariate Tests of Mean-Variance Efficiency and Spanning With a Large Number of Assets and Time-Varying Covariances," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(2), pages 161-175, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    human capital returns; human capital contracts; risk and return of non-traded assets; mean-variance spanning tests;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:13108. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zemande.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.