The Human Capital Stock: A Generalized Approach

Benjamin Jones

American Economic Review, 2014, vol. 104, issue 11, 3752-77

Abstract: 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 difference 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.

JEL-codes: E24 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.104.11.3752
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (119)

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Working Paper: The Human Capital Stock: A Generalized Approach (2011)
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