Identifying Human Capital Externalities: Theory with Applications

Giovanni Peri and Antonio Ciccone

No 6, Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics

Abstract: The identification of aggregate human capital externalities is still not fully understood. The existing (Mincerian) approach confounds positive externalities with wage changes due to a downward sloping demand curve for human capital. As a result, it yields positive externalities even when wages equal marginal social products. We propose an approach that identifies human capital externalities whether or not aggregate demand for human capital slopes downward. Another advantage of our approach is that it does not require estimates of the individual return to human capital. Applications to US cities and states between 1970 and 1990 yield no evidence of significant average-schooling externalities.

Keywords: Human capital externalities; wages; Downward Sloping Labor Demand; Imperfect substitutability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J3 O0 O4 R0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://bw.bse.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/news-summer-forum-2016-file.jpg (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Identifying Human Capital Externalities. Theory with Applications (2007)
Journal Article: Identifying Human-Capital Externalities: Theory with Applications (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bge:wpaper:6

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bruno Guallar ().