Download or read book Essays in Human Capital Development written by Randeep Kaur and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation studies decisions pertaining to human capital investment, specifically education and health. Specifically, I examine human capital decisions through two key research questions. One, what is the effect of household structures on decisions pertaining to human capital development of infants? Two, what is the effect of education policies on education choices? Chapter 1 of the dissertation examines the former by assessing the role of grandparents in household decisions, and Chapters 2 and 3 study the latter question using education policies in India and United States, respectively. Chapter 1 studies the role of grandparents in healthcare decisions made for infants. Using a unique research design, I show that a change to household structure caused by the death of the last living grandparent can be used to identify the effect of grandparents on household decisions, if one exploits the variation in the timing of these decisions relative to the death. This chapter highlights the importance of grandparents in household decisions, especially in context of technology diffusion and human capital development. It also makes an important contribution to the literature by offering a novel empirical strategy that could be used to study the effect of family members on a variety of outcomes in an extended household setting. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 investigate how education policies affect educational outcomes of disadvantaged populations. In Chapter 2, I examine the effects of the world's largest free lunch program, the Mid Day Meal Scheme of India. Using an instrumental variable strategy, I explicitly incorporate the differential implementation levels of the policy across states. The findings of this paper show that India's free lunch program increased primary school enrollment in India, especially for girls and other disadvantaged populations. In Chapter 3, I study the effect of education policies on choices of students in higher education. In particular, I explore the impact of a policy change that allowed undocumented immigrants to be eligible for in-state tuition in Texas. Employing a difference-in-differences strategy, I find that the reduced college costs resulting from the in-state tuition policy decreased the gap in educational outcomes of undocumented immigrants and their US-born peers. The results of this chapter suggest that the in-state tuition policy increased the probability of graduating and graduating with advanced degrees from community colleges for undocumented immigrants.

Download or read book Essays in Human Capital Development written by Debbie Blair and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Human Capital Development written by John F. Creamer and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Inequality in Human Capital Development written by Mark Mitchell and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Human Capital Development and Effective Public Policy Delivery in Peru written by Gabriela Smarrelli and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This note is part of Quality testing.

Download or read book Essays on Culture Human Capital Development and Economic History written by Argyris Sakalis and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Human Capital Development in Latin America and Spain written by Kerstin Manzel and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Human Capital Development Wage Dynamics and Religious Paticipation written by Torsten Santavirta and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on the Economics of Human Capital Development written by Emma Louise Gorman and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Human Capital Formation in Sustainable Development written by Margaret MacLeod and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Human Capital Formation in Developing Countries written by Alexander Sergeevich Ugarov and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Differences in human capital explain approximately one-half of the productivity variation across countries. Therefore, we need to understand drivers of human capital accumulation in order to design successful development policies. My dissertation studies formation and use of human capital with emphasis on its less tangible forms, including skills, abilities and know-how. The first chapter of my dissertation explores the effects of occupational and educational barriers on human capital stock and aggregate productivity. I find that students' academic skills have very small impact on occupational choice in most developing countries. This finding suggests a higher incidence of occupational barriers in developing countries. I evaluate the productivity losses resulting from occupational barriers by calibrating a general equilibrium model of occupational choice. According to my estimation, developing countries can increase their GDP by up to twenty percent by reducing the barriers to the level of a benchmark country (US). In the second chapter of my dissertation, I study the effects of economic growth on education quality. Several models of human capital accumulation predict that incomes have a positive causal effect on human capital for given levels of education by increasing the consumption of educational goods. The paper tests this prediction by using a within country variation in incomes per-capita across different cohorts of US immigrants. Wages of US migrants conditional on years of education serve as a measure of education quality. I find that average domestic incomes experienced by migrants in age from zero to twenty years have a significant positive effect on their future earnings in the US. The third chapter studies the effects of employee-driven technology spillovers on technology adoption. It challenges the theoretical result of Franco and Filson (2006) by assuming that workers are risk averse and that the number of competitors is finite. In this more realistic scenario spillovers significantly reduce payoffs from adopting advanced technologies.

Download or read book Essays on Human Capital Military Conflict and Development in Economic History written by Christina Mumme and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Three Essays on Human Capital and Labor Supply written by Cody Taylor Orr and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation contains three chapters that study individuals' willingness to work, factors that influence their human capital development, and the interaction between their human capital investment decisions and labor supply.Chapter one examines how college students choose their credit hour enrollment, labor supply, and borrowing, paying particular attention to the role of wages, financial resources and beliefs. To formalize these relationships, I construct a dynamic structural model where students choose their credit hours, work hours, and borrowing to maximize lifetime utility. I collect data from two sources to estimate the model: (1) a unique survey of Michigan State undergraduates eliciting their employment history, family financial support, beliefs about the returns to studying and beliefs about earning a high GPA, and (2) administrative data from the University. Estimates of the model suggest that students' credit hour decision is inelastic with respect to changes in financial aid, tuition, beliefs, or wages. Students' labor supply and borrowing decisions are responsive to changes in wages, and for a subset of students, changes in beliefs. I also conduct two counterfactual simulations, increasing the minimum wage and making college tuition free, and evaluate how these policy changes affect student decisions and outcomes.The second chapter studies the relationship between the gender composition of a student's peers and two of their non-cognitive factors: sense of belonging and self-worth. Using data from Add Health and exploiting idiosyncratic variation in the share of female peers across grades within schools, I find positive but small effects of a higher share of female peers for male students. I do not find statistically significant effects for female students, but I can rule out large positive effects.The third chapter, jointly written with Todd Elder and Steven J. Haider, estimates how the wage elasticity of labor supply has changed for single and married men and women over the last two decades. The wage elasticity of labor supply is arguably one of the most fundamental parameters in economics, but despite the central role of this parameter, few studies have examined how it has evolved past the early 2000s. We find robust evidence that the labor supply elasticities for all four demographic groups have increased modestly. For women, this finding is a substantial departure from earlier evidence. We also contribute to the literature on the robustness of discrete choice labor supply models by estimating elasticities under a variety of assumptions and specifications. Our estimated trends are remarkably similar across specifications.

Download or read book Essays on Human Capital Institutions and Economic Growth written by Babar Hussain and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Human Capital Accumulation and Development written by Hyunseok Kim (Ph.D.) and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this dissertation, I explore human capital accumulation and its implication for economic development. Chapter 1 and 2 focused on the mechanism behind the sustained economic growth of South Korea, which was a war-devastated, aid-recipient country two generations ago but now sells semiconductors and automobiles to the world. I ask how the country shifted its technology to capital-intensive production technique. These chapters consider educational policy change that led to an increase in college graduate. Chapter 3 studies the mechanism behind the divergence in employment between temporary and permanent workers in South Korea. The chapter considers the labor policy change that protects temporary employment. For each chapter, I construct a plant-level panel dataset from a series of censuses and connect it with an industry-level input-output table to consider a spillover effect. Chapter 1 studies how an increase in college graduates has affected the technology shift in South Korea. The analysis is based on the concept of complementarity in technology adoption - i.e., the idea that more adopters increase a marginal adopter's gain. I consider skilled labor as an adoption good needed for technology adoption. If complementarity exists in technology adoption, there could be multiple equilibria, possibly leading to undesirable results from coordination failure. I develop a theoretical framework which predicts that an increase in the adoption good of skilled labor could overcome coordination failure and promote a technology shift. Based on plant-level panel data from 1982-1996, I find that accumulation of more outside human capital, or more adopters, (i) benefits marginal adopting firm's profit and investment, and (ii) promotes the firm's technology shift by increasing the productivity of capital while decreasing that of unskilled workers. This paper contributes to the literature on aggregate growth theory by verifying that outside human capital accumulation and its spillover effect contribute to economic growth. Chapter 2 builds on Chapter 1, where human capital is considered an adoption good, by studying the specific role of human capital. Specifically, I explore whether research and development (R&D) is the channel through which human capital accumulation leads to a technology shift. The analysis is based on previous literature indicating that R&D generates new knowledge and the absorption of outside knowledge. The latter role of R&D, absorptive capacity, matches the concept of complementarity in chapter 1. Based on plant-level panel data, I find that (i) human capital accumulation due to the educational policy change promotes R&D in the manufacturing industries; (ii) the effect of R&D spillovers is increasing in a firm's own R&D, a finding which validates the concepts of absorptive capacity and complementarity; and (iii) more outside R&D promotes a firm's technology shift toward capital-intensity. This paper contributes to the literature on endogenous growth, which so far has focused on R&D spillover's effects on total factor productivity rather than on technology shift, by connecting absorptive capacity with complementarity in technology adoption. Chapter 3 investigates another dimension of human capital: permanent and temporary workers. The labor market in South Korea has witnessed a divergence in employment between permanent and temporary workers. The proportion of permanent workers, which had been stable between 50 and 60 percent for two decades in the 1990s and 2000s, has increased recently to above 70 percent. I point out that legislation requiring firms that hire a worker on a temporary basis for more than two years to offer them permanent status serves as a trigger for the divergence. This legislation limits the advantages (to firms) of flexibility in hiring and capacity for screening new workers. Hence, in a competitive labor market firms expect that other firms are more likely to hire permanent rather than temporary workers. If complementarity exists in permanent employment, the legislation serves as a Big Push to make the divergence happen. Based on plant-level panel data covering 2011-2019, I find that (i) flexibility and screening effect of temporary workers are overwhelmed by human capital effect, and (ii) complementarity in permanent employment holds after the temporary employment protection legislation. This paper deepens the understanding of the recent labor market phenomena in South Korea by adopting the concept of complementarity and a Big Push.

Download or read book Essays in Experimental Development Economics and Human Capital Formation written by Rahul Mehrotra and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Essays on Human Capital Health and Development written by Yao Yao and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation studies rich lifecycle behavior concerning human capital and health, and its implications for economic growth and development. It examines the impact of social institutions and government policies on individuals' lifetime choices which affect public health outcomes and economy-wide labor productivity. I apply macroeconomic approach and focus on aggregate effects, but both theoretical framework and quantitative analysis are built upon solid micro foundations of household behavior. By exploring the underlying channels, I derive policy implications for economic growth and development. This dissertation consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 studies the role of fertility motives in women's HIV risk in Sub-Saharan Africa, Chapter 2 studies the impact of higher education expansion along with economic reform on Chinas labor productivity, and Chapter 3 explores patterns of Chinas regional income disparity. Chapter 1 examines the role of social and cultural norms regarding fertility in women's HIV risk in Sub-Saharan Africa. Fertility, or the ability to bear children, is highly valued in most African societies, and premarital fertility is often encouraged in order to facilitate marriage. This, however, increases women's exposure to HIV risk by increasing unprotected premarital sexual activity. I construct a lifecycle model that relates a woman's decisions concerning sex, fertility and education to HIV risk. The model is calibrated to match Kenyan womens data on fertility, marriage and HIV prevalence. Quantitative results show that fertility motives play a substantial role in women's, especially young women's, HIV risk. If premarital births did not facilitate marriage, the HIV prevalence rate of young women in Kenya would be one-third lower. Policies that subsidize income, education, and HIV treatment are evaluated. Chapter 2 studies the impact of higher education expansion, along with economic reform of the state sector, in the late 1990's in China on its labor productivity. I argue that in an economy such as China, where allocation distortions widely exist, an educational policy affects average labor productivity not only through its effect on human capital stock, but also through its effect on human capital allocation across sectors. Thus, its impact could be very limited if misallocation becomes more severe following the policy. I construct a two- sector general equilibrium model with private enterprises (PE) and state-owned enterprises (SOE), with policy distortions favoring the latter. Households, heterogeneous in ability, make educational choices and occupational choices in a three-period overlapping-generations setting. Counterintuitively, quantitative analysis shows an overall negative effect of higher education expansion on average labor productivity (by 5 percent). Though it did increase China's skilled human capital stock significantly (by nearly 50 percent), the policy had the effect of reallocating relatively more human capital toward the less-productive state sector. It is the economic reform that greatly improves the efficiency of human capital allocation and complements educational policy in enhancing labor productivity (by nearly 50 percent). Chapter 3 explores patterns of China's regional income disparity. I document the stylized fact that the regional labor income disparity varies across industries with different skill in- tensities in China. While high-skill-intensive industries have larger income dispersions across regions than low-skill-intensive ones, this pattern tends to intensify over recent decades. I construct a model that interprets this pattern using the regional productivity variation of high-skilled firms, match-specific ability, firms' screening decision and workers' migration. In particular, firms in rich regions have higher productivity than those in poor regions. Workers are heterogeneous in ability, which is match-specific and unobservable before screening. Since ability and productivity are complements for high-skilled firms, these firms in rich regions pay more screening efforts to select workers with higher ability, and pay a higher wage in equilibrium. Workers live in different regions, and migration incurs a cost. This increases la- bor market tightness in rich regions and amplifies the regional income disparity. The model is quantified to match China's data. Counterfactual analysis shows that the screening process accounts for 45 percent of China's regional income disparity of high-skill-intensive industries, and migration barrier accounts for 10 percent.