Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Human capital'

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Administración
Juan Pablo Valdivia Hevia [Parte I Análisis estratégico y de mercado], Francisco González Reyes [Parte IIAnálisis organizativo-financiero]
Autores no envían autorizaciones para acceso a texto completo de su documento
El mercado del reclutamiento y selección de personal, está constituido hoy en día por 1470 empresas ubicadas en todo nuestro país, quienes prestan servicios principalmente a las grandes y medianas empresas, quienes cuentan con un total de 5.879.176 empleados. Considerando que la tasa de rotación en Chile es de aproximadamente un 23%1, existe un mercado potencial aproximado de 1.352.211 personas que cambian de trabajo de manera anual. El negocio consiste en cambiar la forma de buscar y seleccionar al nuevo capital humano dentro de una organización, esto mediante la creación de una plataforma web que permita selección (mediante medios tecnológicos de respaldo virtual, entrevista y video), verificar la información de los candidatos (en base a información pública vigente) y hacer un seguimiento de tres meses una vez contratado por la empresa, dentro de la organización. Esto permite tener un alto grado de diferenciación único y valorable a través del tiempo, no generando un contrato spot entre empresa- reclutador sino buscando una relación de confianza a lo largo del tiempo con nuestros clientes, No solo buscamos el postulante ideal para esa vacante en su organización, sino asumimos el desafío de involucrarnos desde el primer minuto con el problema general de insertar a ese valioso elemento dentro de su organización. La ventaja competitiva de diferenciación son la trazabilidad de la información, que permite a las empresas contar con un seguimiento y verificación de la información, tanto antes de la contratación, como en forma posterior; una disminución de los costos asociados a la rotación del personal, ya que la mejor información previa y el seguimiento de tres meses posterior a su contratación busca asegurar una adecuada adecuación al cargo y, por último, lograr un re fortalecimiento en la organización en los procesos de reclutamiento, selección y seguimiento, que fortalece las labores de los profesionales de la rama de Recursos Humanos. El modelo de negocio consiste en el posicionamiento de la empresa en el segmento de las grandes y medianas empresas, quienes realizan procesos externos de reclutamiento. Para ello, se les ofrece el servicio de una Plataforma web que les permite realizar los procesos de selección y seguimiento en línea. Como recursos claves del negocio, es posible identificar la plataforma digital y su servicio de soporte, así como la experiencia de nuestros profesionales miembros del equipo Human Core los cuales presentan la capacidad de buscar y seleccionar el postulante más adecuado al perfil solicitado, como también el levantar los obstáculos necesarios en el proceso de inducción para el nuevo recurso humano de la organización. Al ser una empresa orientada al ámbito del servicio general de reclutamiento, el monto total de inversiones es de $60.000.000, con un activo fijo es muy bajo, alcanzando los $10.146.000. Los costos fijos se explican principalmente por salarios y beneficios, gastos de administración, publicidad y marketing (93% del total, correspondiente a $84.840.000). En cuanto a los costos variables, éstos corresponden principalmente a los asociados a la verificación de antecedentes, Safe Chalenge y Bonos de cumplimiento anuales. De acuerdo a los indicadores de evaluación de proyecto (VAN, TIR, Payback, ROI), es posible determinar que el negocio resulta viable económicamente, considerando un horizonte de cinco años. Human Core busca dar un vuelco en los procesos de selección, reclutamiento y selección que compartimos a lo largo de este plan de negocios.

El presente trabajo contiene tres ensayos sobre temas relacionados con el capital humano. El Capítulo 1examina empíricamente los determinantes de la descentralización del poder de toma de decisiones en las pequeñas y medianas empresas (PYMEs). El Capítulo 2usa un panel de países durante el periodo 1970-2004 para analizar la contribución de los líderes políticos en la mejora de la educación de los ciudadanos e investigar cómo se ve afectado el nivel educativo de la población cuando un líder con educación superior permanece en el poder. Por último, el Capítulo 3 evalúa el impacto de la duración de la educación primaria en la matrículaescolar, la deserción escolar y las tasas de graduación. El análisis se basa en un panel de datos para los países no miembros de la OCDE durante el período 1970-2012. Cada capítulo puede ser considerado independiente del resto.
This thesis includes three essays on topics related to human capital.Chapter 1examines empirically the determinants of delegation of decision-making in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This chapter considers the human capital as an important factor which determines the allocation of decision rights within the firm. The last two chapters carry out an empirical analysis on the link between institutions, governance and education. In particular, Chapter 2 using a panel of countries covering the period 1970-2004, looks at the contribution of political leaders to enhance citizen’s educationand investigates how the educational attainment of the population is affected while a leader with higher education remains in office. Finally, Chapter 3analyzes the impact of duration of primary education on school enrollment, graduation and drop-outs rates. The empirical analysis draws upon a panel data for non-OECD countries covering the period 1970-2012.Each chapter can be considered independently of the rest

This thesis entitled “Essays on Human Capital” is comprised of three essays on various aspects of human capital and its effects on firms and labor markets. Chapter 1 provides an overview. In Chapter 2 we estimate the effects of human capital on firm-level management practices. We adopt an instrumental variables strategy to overcome the potential endogeneity of human capital. Starting with data on management practices from the World Management Survey, we geocode the locations of more than 6,000 manufacturing plants in 19 countries. Then, we calculate driving times to universities in the World Higher Education Database. Using distance as an instrument for human capital, we estimate that every one standard deviation increase in the share of workers with a university degree leads to 0.5 of a standard deviation improvement in management. These findings are robust to a battery of checks and a placebo instrument using distances to world heritage sites. We show that both managers’ and non-managers’ human capital matter. In Chapter 3 we estimate the effects of university degree class on initial labor market outcomes. We employ a regression discontinuity design which utilizes university rules governing the award of degrees. We find sizeable and significant effects for Upper Second degrees and positive but smaller effects for First Class degrees on wages. A First Class is worth roughly 3 percent in starting wages which translates into $1,000 per annum. An Upper Second is worth more-7 percent in starting wages which is roughly $2,040. We interpret these results as the signaling effects of degree class and provide evidence consistent with this. Finally in Chapter 4 we study the labor market effects of increased automation. We build a model in which firms optimally design machines, train workers, and assign these factors to tasks. Borrowing concepts from computer science and robotics, the model features tasks which are difficult from an engineering perspective but easy for humans to carry out due to innate capacities for functions like vision, movement, and communication. In equilibrium, firms assign low-skill workers to such tasks. High skill workers have a comparative advantage in tasks which require much training and are difficult to automate. Workers in the middle of the skill distribution perform tasks of intermediate difficulty on both dimensions. When the cost of designing machines falls, firms adopt machines mainly in tasks that were previously performed by middle-skill workers. Occupations at both the bottom and the top of the wage distribution experience employment gains. The wage distribution becomes more dispersed near the top but compressed near the bottom. As design costs fall further, only the most skilled workers enjoy rising skill premiums, and an increasing fraction of the labor force is employed in jobs that require little or no training. The model’s implications are consistent with recent evidence of job polarization and a hollowing-out of the wage distribution. In addition, the model yields novel predictions about trends in occupational training requirements that are consistent with evidence we present.

This thesis aims to document several aspects pertaining to the dynamics of human capital, both from a theoretical and an empirical viewpoint. Chapter 2 studies how informational flows arising from social connections can affect careers and promotions. It aims to achieve identification of this causal pathway by focusing on the careers of bishops in the Catholic church. The range of the data, both in time and in space, makes it possible to infer some types of social connections between bishops (based on geography and careers), which in turn allows for the identification of their effect on careers. I find that being connected to the relevant bishops has a positive and significant effect on the likelihood of promotion to a diocese. Chapter 3 investigates the transmission of human capital from one generation to the next. While the correlation of parents’ educational achievement with that of their children is strong and well documented, there is a scarcity of consensual evidence that this relationship has a causal nature. We use a French reform that increased the duration of compulsory schooling by two years as a natural experiment, providing exogenous variation in parental years of schooling, and study its effect on the children of the affected individuals. We find evidence of a strong effect of paternal education on the educational achievement of children. Research on employer learning has concentrated on contexts where there is uncertainty only on either the general or the match-specific human capital of the worker. Chapter 4 develops a model where general and specific human capital coexist, and the uncertainty is on their respective shares in total productivity. The model generates predictions on a number of dimensions, e.g. declining worker mobility with experience and increase in wage variance over the lifetime.

Whenever someone starts a company from scratch there is a great chance he or she (the entrepreneur) looks for funding. People who fund entrepreneurs and start-­‐ups are usually venture capitalists or business angels. Whether it is one or the other these people want to invest wisely. However without last year’s report piling up at the reception of this start-­‐up another approach is necessary. This master thesis focuses on how valuation is possible without haveing financial data. The main focus the thesis is to find whitch personal attributes you should look for in a successful future entrepreneur.

My collection of short stories is set mostly in Gauteng and revolves around mainly the lives of the urban, black elite almost three decades after the first non‐racial elections in South Africa. It captures emerging trends and fault lines and enquires into whether South Africa can continue on a different path from that of the rest of the continent. Themes covered in the collection, which still espouses idealism, include the acquisition of power, status and money, the use and abuse of these, as well as the psychosocial effects of money on this group. My writing is inspired by the courageous, inventive and introspective writings of the Drum generation of writers William Bloke Modisane, Nat Nakasa and Can Themba, as well as the use of language and the experimental form of writing as embodied in the work of Lidia Yuknavitch to deal with similarly pressing social issues of the day.

This thesis emphasises human capital accumulation in early life, and analyses whether and how interruption of this accumulation process in childhood will influence both the stock of human capital and other socioeconomic outcomes in adulthood. Based on the theoretical framework of dynamic complementarity and the foetal origin hypothesis, Chapters 2, 3 and 4 provide empirical evidence on the life cycle mechanism of human capital investment. Chapter 2 analyses the relationship between household income and infant mortality in developing countries. Using international commodity prices as a source of exogenous variation in household income, this study discusses the potentially different influences of labour-intensive and capital-intensive commodity price changes on infant mortality, a marker of investments in child health. Using comparable Demographic and Health Survey data for 65 developing countries, this chapter finds that infant mortality is decreasing in labour-intensive commodity prices, whereas it is increasing in capital-intensive commodity prices. Chapter 3 examines the long-run consequences of exposure to natural disasters in early life using the event of the Valdivia earthquake in Chile in 1960, the largest recorded earthquake in history. It analyses whether human capital stocks were lower for cohorts exposed to this disaster at birth, or whether they had recovered three to four decades later. The results show that children born in Valdivia after the earthquake had lower schooling, a deficit of 1.5 months on average compared with earlier birth cohorts, but there are no significant differences in their health and socioeconomic status. Chapter 4 studies the influences of educational disruption on human capital accumulation and labour market performance in the long term in the context of the Chinese Cultural Revolution which imposed school and university closure. Using China census and survey data, this chapter reveals that approximately two million students were unable to finish their education, and there were unfavourable impacts on their employment status, job quality and income.

Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Economics
William F. Blankenau
The first essay considers how the timing of government education spending influences the intergenerational persistence of income. We build a life-cycle model where human capital is accumulated in early and late childhood. Both families and the government can increase the human capital of young agents by investing in education at each stage of childhood. Ability in each dynasty follows a stochastic process. Different abilities and resultant spending histories generate a stochastic steady state distribution of income. We calibrate our model to match aggregate statistics in terms of education expenditures, income persistence and inequality. We show that increasing government spending in early childhood education is effective in lowering intergenerational earnings elasticity. An increase in government funding of early childhood education equivalent to 0.8 percent of GDP reduces income persistence by 8.4 percent. We find that this relatively large effect is due to the weakening relationship between family income and education investment. Since this link is already weak in late childhood, allocating more public resources to late childhood education does not improve the intergenerational mobility of economic status. Furthermore, focusing more on late childhood may raise intergenerational persistence by amplifying the gap in human capital developed in early childhood. The second essay considers parental time investment in early childhood as an education input and explores the impact of early education policies on labor supply and human capital. I develop a five-period overlapping generations model where human capital formation is a multi-stage process. An agent's human capital is accumulated through early and late childhood. Parents make income and time allocation decisions in response to government expenditures and parental leave policies. The model is calibrated to the U.S. economy so that the generated data matches the Gini index and parental participation in education expenditures. The general equilibrium environment shows that subsidizing private education spending and adopting paid parental leave are both effective at increasing human capital. These two policies give parents incentives to increase physical and time investment, respectively. Labor supply decreases due to the introduction of paid parental leave as intended. In addition, low-wage earners are most responsive to parental leave by working less and spending more time with children. The third essay is on the motherhood wage penalty. There is substantial evidence that women with children bear a wage penalty of 5 to 10 percent due to their motherhood status. This wage gap is usually estimated by comparing the wages of working mothers to childless women after controlling for human capital and individual characteristics. This method runs into the problem of selection bias by excluding non-working women. This paper addresses the issue in two ways. First, I develop a simple model of fertility and labor participation decisions to examine the relationships among fertility, employment, and wages. The model implies that mothers face different reservation wages due to variance in preference over child care, while non-mothers face the same reservation wage. Thus, a mother with a relatively high wage may choose not to work because of her strong preference for time with children. In contrast, a childless woman who is not working must face a relatively low wage. For this reason, empirical analysis that focuses only on employed women may result in a biased estimate of the motherhood wage penalty. Second, to test the predictions of the model, I use 2004-2009 data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97) and include non-working women in the two-stage Heckman selection model. The empirical results from OLS and the fixed effects model are consistent with the findings in previous studies. However, the child penalty becomes smaller and insignificant after non-working women are included. It implies that the observed wage gap in the labor market appears to overstate the child wage penalty due to the sample selection bias.

This thesis attempts to analyze the relationship between economic growth and human capital investments in Taiwan. The study's general hypothesis is that increases in human capital investments will stimulate the growth of gross national product. The data were drawn from official Taiwanese publications from different sources. The first chapter emphasizes the importance of human capital investments. Chapter II reviews the related literature. Chapter III specifies the model and research methods. Chapter IV analyzes the impact of human capital investments on gross national product. The study is summarized and conclusions are drawn in Chapter V. Materials collected to analyze the above problem reveal that human capital investments have a positive and significant effect on economic growth. In fact, human capital investments and economic growth are mutually affected.

This thesis comprises of two essays that explore issues related to human capital, technology and inequality. The first study examines the impact of human capital on recently created, direct measures of technology adoption. It indicates that the type of human capital that is formed via the learning-by-doing mechanism may be the most important determinant of technological diffusion, followed by qualitative determinants such as cognitive skills and quantitative or other measures. The second study examines qualitative measures of human capital from a microeconomic perspective by analyzing the composition and determinants of human capital inequality. Decomposition at school level reveals that each country has a unique set of determinants of within-school inequality. Compared to aggregated approaches used in extant literature, these findings suggest that a disaggregated, stepwise exploration of this type is more fruitful in identifying the root causes of inequality in human capital.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University
This dissertation is a qualitative and quantitative research effort aiming to establish the meaning of, and the form(s) that human capital and human capital investment, traditionally business-oriented concepts, take in an institution of higher education. The literature review provides an extensive background of human capital and human capital investment theory and theorists. It presents a case study completed at a small college combining interviews, survey administration, and analysis to formulate hypotheses about the nature of human capital investment in institutions of higher learning. The interviews provided rich data through specific examples of how employees at the college defined human capital investment. Analysis of the interviews resulted in the formation of six human capital dimensions, one dimension unique to higher education institutions. A preliminary human capital investment survey was created and quantitative measures were able to discriminate one interpretable factor, similar to one dimension created from the interviews. The factor encompassed items that were related to the moral involvement (Etzioni, 1961) of the employees. This lead the researcher to believe that human capital investment in this higher education institution is different than in corporations. Further research is encouraged to validate this hypothesis and to continue to promote discussions about human capital investment in institutions of higher education.

This dissertation consists of three essays concerning the effects of human capital and health capital on the labor market. Chapter 1 presents a structural model that incorporates a health capital stock to the traditional learning-by-doing model. The model allows health to affect future wages by interrupting current labor supply and on-the-job human capital accumulation. Using data on sick time from the Panel Study Income of Dynamics the model is estimated using a nonlinear Generalized Method of Moments estimator. The results show human capital production exhibits diminishing returns. Health capital production increases with the current stock of health capital, or better current health improves future health. Among prime age working men, the effect of health on human capital accumulation is relatively small. Chapter 2 explores the role of another form of human capital, noncognitive skills, in explaining racial gaps in wages. Chapter 2 adds two noncognitive skills, locus of control and self-esteem, to a simple wage specification to determine the effect of these skills on the racial wage gap (white, black, and Hispanic) and the return to these skills across the wage distribution. The wage specifications are estimated using pooled, between, and quantile estimators. Results using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 show these skills account for differing portions of the racial wage gap depending on race and gender. Chapter 3 synthesizes the idea of health and on-the-job human capital accumulation from Chapter 1 with the idea of noncognitive skills in Chapter 2 to examine the influence of these skills on human capital and health capital accumulation in adult life. Chapter 3 introduces noncognitive skills to a life cycle labor supply model with endogenous health and human capital accumulation. Noncognitive skills, measured by degree of future orientation, self-efficacy, trust-hostility, and aspirations, exogenously affect human capital and health production. The model uses noncognitive skills assessed in the early years of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and relates these skills to health and human capital accumulation during adult life. The main findings suggest individuals with high self-efficacy receive higher future wages.

Tidigare forskning har identifierat ett gap mellan teori och hur företag använder kapitalbudgeteringstekniker i praktiken. Forskning tyder på att gapet är särskilt stort vid SME-företag, eftersom de tenderar att använda de enkla kapitalbudgeteringsteknikerna. Genom att försöka förklara förekomsten av fenomenet the theory-practice gap  har forskare reflekterat kring vilka bakomliggande faktorer som ligger till grund för valet av kapitalbudgeteringsteknik i SME-företag. En bakomliggande faktor som påverkar valet av kapitalbudgeteringsteknik är en individs humankapital, i form av utbildningsnivå och yrkeserfarenhet. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur humankapitalet påverkar valet av kapitalbudgeteringsteknik vid strategiska investeringar i svenska SME-företag. För att undersöka och analysera studiens syfte har en kvantitativ datainsamlingsmetod använts i form av en internetbaserad enkät. Studien har en positivistisk forskningsfilosofi som utgår från en deduktiv forskningsansats som används för att möjliggöra hypotesprövningar. Studiens resultat baseras på 56 respondenter vilka är beslutfattare vid strategiska investeringar i svenska SME-företag, där resultaten illustreras med hjälp av statistiska analysmetoder. Studiens resultat och slutsats visar att beslutfattare i svenska SME-företag med högre utbildningsnivå eller högre grad av yrkeserfarenhet ökar användningen av avancerade kapitalbudgeteringstekniker. Dock kan inte studiens resultat signifikant påvisa att en beslutsfattare i svenska SME-företag med låg utbildningsnivå eller lägre grad av yrkeserfarenhet använder enkla kapitalbudgeteringstekniker.
Previous research has identified a gap between theory and how companies actually use capital budgeting techniques in practice. Research highlights that the gap is particularly large among SMEs, as they tend to use simpler capital budgeting techniques. By trying to explain the phenomenon of the theory-practice gap, researchers have reflected on underlying factors that influence the choice of capital budgeting techniques in SMEs. An underlying factor, that influences the choice of capital budgeting techniques, is on the individual level in terms of educational degree and occupational level of experience. The aim of this thesis is therefore to increase the understanding of how the human capital influences the choice of capital budgeting techniques in Swedish SMEs. To examine the aim of the study, a quantitative method is used by a web-based survey. Furthermore, the study is based on a positivism research philosophy that evolve from a deductive research method in order to draw general conclusions. The result of the study is based on 56 responses from decision makers for strategic investments in Swedish SMEs, where the results are illustrated using statistical analysis methods. The results and conclusions of the study shows that decision makers in Swedish SMEs with higher degree of education or higher level of occupational experience increase the use of more advanced capital budgeting techniques. However, the results do not support that decision makers in Swedish SMEs with a lower degree of education or lower level of occupational experience use more simple capital budgeting techniques.

The objectives of this study are to determine the awareness level of knowledge sharing amongst the employees of Sasol, to determine how Sasol utilises human capital in the company and to identify and analyse the methods of knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer. The literature review distinguishes between explicit and tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge leads a company to codify while tacit knowledge leads to connecting people. The literature study also covers the utilisation of human capital and identifies methods of knowledge sharing and -transfer, namely legacy pages, expert location systems, buddy systems, post-retirement agreements, identification of successors, After Action Reviews, interviews, observation, protocol analysis, teach backs, story writing and storytelling, and process mapping. The literature study forms the foundation for the formulation and designing of a questionnaire. The questionnaire was distributed amongst the employees of two of Sasol's divisions in order to obtain data about the utilisation of human capital in Sasol and to identify and analyse the current and preferred methods to capture and share tacit knowledge and skills. The data obtained from the questionnaires was processed, analysed and interpreted. Conclusions were drawn, linking the literature review and the results obtained from the empirical study. Based on these conclusions, recommendations were made.
Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2006.

The study of career paths within organizations is an issue that has received strong attention in the theoretical literature of organizational economics and management1. From the empirical point of view, however, research in this topic is scarcer and less comprehensive. The gap has been caused to a large extent by the unavailability of data tracking worker's career moves in employee-level surveys and by the lack of information about career management policies in firm-level data. This thesis contributes to fill such hole. It investigates how workers' careers and their behavior as managers depend on the characteristics of the firms where they work and their own personal characteristics, with a strong emphasis in the role of human capital. The research is carried out using micro data at both worker and firm level, available only in relatively recent data sets.



The interaction between accumulation of human capital and workers' employment horizons has been frequently recognized as a key issue in explaining why some firms maintain long-term relationships with their employees while others remain closer to what it could be considered spot-market labor contracting. There are nonetheless important factors that have been usually absent in the literature of organizations. This is the case of internal firm structures that may improve or discourage the interactions between different hierarchical levels, affecting eventually to the costs of job change involved in promotions. Both human capital and organization-relational aspects of career paths are objects of study of this thesis. First, it is analyzed how the characteristics of employers and the markets where they work affect the general or firm-specific nature of employees' human capital and, therefore, to the type of employment relationship held. Second, it is investigated how differences in employees' personal characteristics affect their career horizons, the management of their human capital and the type of career moves done. Finally, the effects of these factors on career path outcomes are examined, in terms of leadership behavioral differences among those arriving at managerial levels. A particular attention is paid the important differences between the careers of men and women that are also found in their managerial style.



Overall, the research presented here sheds light on what career management schemes adapt better to different product and labor market circumstances. It opens as well a number of challenges for the study of human resources management and shows that population-wide surveys can be very useful tools to carry out empirical investigations in this area, usually dominated by narrower and less representative surveys.

This is a survey study about the concept of human capital and has to be considered as a collection of opinions, ideas and models. The concept of human capital can be defined, despite the difficulties, as the stock of skills and knowledge, gained through education and experience. A more detailed definition is given and a review of its historic development it is also made. The study then turns to the problem of evaluation of human beings and finds some solutions to evaluation problems that may arise. Earnings or future incomes seem to be a good approximation of human capital value.

The concept of human capital is then analyzed from an economic stand point and the bonds it has with family, education, training and future incomes are analyzed. Further an explanation of the impact of parents, of the schooling system and of on the job training on the formation of human capital is also made. Other factors, especially sociological ones, are also taken in account and are considered important in influencing human capital. Thus the role of society must not be forgotten.

All those issues contribute in determining one's income flows during life, as the earnings age profile shows. Differences in opportunities, depending mostly on family and public expenditures in education, and abilities, depending mostly on one's “natural talents”, are deemed as important in determining one's future incomes, direct expression of human capital.

This body of work contains four essays. The first three use a novel approach to measuring the impact that taxation has on individuals' incentive to invest in human capital; specifically, a university education. The final essay uses the results from the first three to explore the capital levy problem in a new light. Using the framework for effective marginal tax rates (EMTRs) on physical capital, a conceptual framework is developed for measuring similar rates on human capital. Unlike their physical capital counterpart, effective tax rates (ETRs) on human capital are not measured at the margin, but rather are based on the next level of education attainment (e.g. high school vs. university/college). The reason, which is explained in detail, is that the lumpiness of human capital investment matters, unlike for physical capital. Results show that the progressivity of personal income taxation plays a large role in human capital ETRs, as do non-tax policy instruments (e.g. registered education savings plans, tuition and other direct costs to education, education allowances, etc.). Human capital ETRs are nonuniform, like their EMTR cousins, but are lower in magnitude. The results also support the view that the tax structure may influence the incentive for highly educated Canadians to seek employment in the United States, mitigating the brain drain phenomenon. The final essay looks at the capital levy problem. If capital investments are irreversible, governments can tax these items ex post with little (or no) deadweight loss. As a result, smart investors end up investing less in certain types of capital. In the end there is an underinvestment in capital. The problem with this view is that it only describes what happens in the case of physical capital investment. Given the importance of human capital in today's "knowledge-based" economy, it is imperative that the framework address both of these types of capital. A general equilibrium model is developed. Results support the view that it is more than wages alone that determine migration incentives; the structure of the tax system, public goods, adjustment costs, are all shown to play a role. Simulation results are also provided.

The empirical literature on the relationship between natural disaster risk and investment in education is inconclusive. Model averaging methods in a framework of crosscountry and panel regressions show an extremely robust negative partial correlation between secondary school enrollment and natural disaster risk. This result is driven exclusively by geologic disasters. Exposure to natural disaster risk is a robust determinant of differences in secondary school enrollment between countries but not necessarily within countries Natural disasters, human capital, education, school enrollment, Bayesian model averaging.

This thesis consists of three independent chapters on human capital in Brazil. Chapter one examines the effect of the introduction of automatic grade promotion on student performance in 1,993 public primary schools in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. A difference-in-differences approach that exploits variation over time in the adoption of the policy allows the identification of the treatment effect of automatic promotion. I find a negative and significant effect of about 6% of a standard deviation. I provide evidence from quantile regression DiD estimates consistent with an interpretation of the findings as disincentive effect on student effort associated with the introduction of automatic grade promotion; additional evidence on student and teacher behaviour supports this interpretation. Chapter two provides a novel way of identifying peer group effects in Brazil. Students in Brazil are typically assigned to classes based on the age ranking in their cohort. I exploit this rule to estimate the effects on maths achievement of being in class with older peers for students in fifth grade using a regression discontinuity design. I provide evidence that heterogeneity in age (and in other characteristics) is an important factor for student performance. Information on teaching practices and student behaviour sheds light on how class heterogeneity may harm learning. Chapter three uses microdata from Brazilian vital statistics natality and mortality data between 2000 and 2010 to estimate the impact of in-utero exposure to local violence - measured by homicide rates - on birth outcomes. Focusing on small communities, for which it is more credible that local homicide rates reflect actual exposure to violence, the analysis shows that exposure to violence during pregnancy leads to deterioration in birth outcomes: one extra homicide during the first trimester of pregnancy increases the probability of low birthweight by around 6 percent.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2004.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: As the world's economic landscape undergoes a fundamental shift from industrial economy in which plant and equipment are the core assets, to the 'new' economy which places a high premium on people and intangible assets traditional accounting systems are becoming less effective. Intellectual Capital has become the indispensable component of corporate value. The significant rise in the market-to-book ratio of listed companies is testimonial of this fact. By focusing on physical and cash assets, and remaining oblivious to Intellectual Capital, conventional accounting methods are missing a very crucial point. The exclusion of Intellectual Capital from financial performance reports results in information deficiency for both internal and external stakeholders of organizations. Measurement and reporting of Intellectual Capital has thus become imperative. However, it is the Human Capital component (of Intellectual Capital) that should be the prime concern of business leaders and other stakeholders. People are the true agents in business; all the other assets, whether tangible or intangible, are the result of human actions and ultimately depend on people for their continued existence. Measurement and reporting of Human Capital is therefore of the essence. Measurement of Human Capital is not simple and straightforward. Development of methodologies for valuation of Human Capital is a daunting challenge. In spite of its difficulty, measurement of Human Capital has to be vigorously pursued; the stakes are just too high for the challenge to be shunned. This study proposes a system for valuation of Human Capital. "Valuation" may conjure expectations of financial measurement; however, despite concerted efforts by the accounting profession, currency-based valuation of people has received very little, if any, appreciation in industry. The model put forward here, is a non-monetary Human Capital Index.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Met die fundamentele verskuiwing van die ekonomiese landskap van die wêreld, vanaf 'n industriële ekonomie met produksie-aanlegte en toerusting as primêre bates, tot die nuwe ekonomie wat 'n hoë premie op mense en ontasbare bates plaas, het konvensionele rekeningkundige stelsels toenemend ondoeltreffend geraak. Intellektuele kapitaal het 'n onontbeerlike onderdeel van korporatiewe waarde geword. Die betekenisvolle premie wat die markwaarde bo die batewaarde van genoteerde maatskappye geniet, lewer bewys van hierdie tendens. Deur te fokus op fisiese en monetêre bates, en nie intellektuele bates in ag te neem nie , verontagsaam konvensionele rekeningkundige stelsels 'n kern beginsel. Die uitsluiting van intellektuele kapitaal as deel van prestasie verslagdoening lei tot 'n gebrekkige inligtingsbasis vir beide interne en eksterne belangegroepe van die organisasie. Meting van, en verslagdoening oor intellektuele kapitaal, het dus 'n noodsaaklikheid geword. Dit is egter die menslike hulpbron komponent van intellektuele kapitaal wat die primêre oorweging by sakeleiers en ander belanghebbendes behoort te wees. Mense is die werklike rolspelers in organisasies. AI die ander bates, tasbaar of ontasbaar, is die gevolg van menslike aktiwiteit, en hang uiteindelik van mense af vir hul voortgesette bestaan. Daarom is dit van die uiterste belang dat daar 'n proses is wat menslike bates evalueer en verslag doen. Die meting van menslike kapitaal is nie eenvoudig en voor die hand liggend nie. Die ontwikkeling van metodes om menslike kapitaal te assesseer is 'n besondere uitdaging. Ten spyte van die probleme moet die assessering van menslike kapitaal daadwerklik nagestreef word; hierdie saak is te belangrik om te ontwyk. Hierdie studie stel 'n model voor om waardebepaling van menslike kapitaal te doen. So 'n waardebepaling mag verwagtinge van 'n finansiële metingsbasis skep; tog, ten spyte van doelgerigte pogings deur die rekeningkundige professie, het 'n monetêre waardebepaling van mense weinig, indien enige, aanvaarding in die sakewêreld ontvang. Die model wat hier voorgestel word, is 'n nie-monetêre menslike kapitaal indeks.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2001.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study looks at practical guidelines on how to make human capital the differentiating factor. It is the first phase of a process of further study, commentary and implementation. Students at the University of Stellenbosch Business School completed one assignment of their choice from one of eight key areas. These related to the following concepts: people management strategies delivering tangible results; entrenching a workplace culture that delivers optimum performance; high performance workplace practices; growth through competency-based skills training; team-based leadership; strategy processes for changing workplaces into major competitive advantages; transforming knowledge into power and enabling organisations to implement change. The approach followed in this study was to identify two or three well-researched (with regard to existing and international best practices) assignments in each of the eight areas and in this way conduct an assessment of what organisations are currently doing to make human capital the differentiating factor. It was clear that more world-class organisations recognize the bottomline value of a skilled and dedicated workforce. However, investing in human capital is not that easy. It requires many choices like, amongst others: What are the appropriate reward strategies for an organisation? Which benefits are competitive, cost-effective and valued? How do organisations deal with a globally mobile workforce? Valued lessons learnt and recommendations were identified, for future students and organisations, with regard to the second round of validating the information gathered in this research project.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie studie ondersoek praktiese riglyne oor hoe om mense kapitaal die onderskeidende faktor te maak. Die studie is die eerste fase van 'n proses van verdere studie, kommentaar en implementering. Studente aan die Universiteit van Stellenbosch - Bestuurskool het elk 'n werkstuk van eie keuse in een van agt sleutel areas voltooi. Die onderwerpe het met die volgende verband gehou: mense bestuursstrategië wat tasbare resultate oplewer; vestiging van 'n werksplek kultuur wat optimum prestasie bewerkstellig; hoë-prestasie werksplek praktyke; groei deur vermoëndheids gebaseerde vaardigheids opleiding; span gebaseerde leierskap, strategiese prosesse om die werksplek in 'n grootskaalse kompeterende voorsprong te verander; die transformasie van kennis na mag en die instaatstelling van organisasies om verandering te implementeer. Die uitgangspunt van hierdie studie is gerig op die identifisering van twee of drie goed nagevorsde werkstukke(met verwysing na bestaande en internasionale beste praktyke) in elk van die agt areas en op hierdie wyse te bepaal wat organisasies doen om mense kapitaal die onderskeidende faktor te maak. Dit. het duidelik geword dat die meer wêreld-klas organisasies die grondwaarde van 'n vaardige en toegewyde werksmag erken. BeIegging in mense kapitaal is egter nie so eenvoudig nie. Dit vereis ondermeer keuses oor: Wat is die mees gepaste vergoedingsstrategie vir 'n organisasie? Watter voordele is kompeterend, koste-effektief en gewaardeerd? Hoe handel organisasies met 'n globaal mobiels werksmag? Waardevolle lesse en aanbevelings, vir die tweede fase van geldigheidsverklaring van die inligting versamel in hierdie navorsingsprojek, is vir toekomstige studente en organisasie identifiseer.

Marriage is one of the most private and critical decisions a person makes in their life. This has far reaching effects on an individual, their average quality of life and most importantly on the lives of their children. The development of young children, in terms of emotional, physical, social and learning skills, has a direct effect on their overall development and on the adults they will become. Comprehending the role played by marital unions and the elements that potentially shape children's human capital formation is intriguing and important, to acquire knowledge on where new initiatives are needed and how to design the optimal policies. This thesis consists of three chapters that all empirically investigate issues related to how families function in different environments, in order to understand the nature, causes and consequences of disparities in children's human capital. The first chapter focuses on India, while the second and third chapters are centred on the United States. Although different environments, different histories, varied cultures and different backgrounds, yet the one common theme of this thesis is the way in which families are rational players within households.

The last two decades management as science went under two banners: "innovation" and "human resources". This time can be described as complication of external organizational environment, a sharp increase in the pace of its change and increased competition in global markets. Human capital (HC) as a component of the intellectual capital of the organization has become one of the main factors increasing the competitiveness of enterprises and the country itself. This requires finding hidden reserves and new ways to improve efficiency of HC.

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Human Capital investments are essential for the economic development of a country. In Brazil, several sources point to the lack of qualified workforce as a cause of slower economic growth. This dissertation explores the theoretical linkages made from income inequality to economic performance. The empirical section focuses on one of the theories presented, the one on creditmarket imperfections. According to this theory, imperfect credit markets are poor resource allocators and do not allow for low income individuals to invest in their own human capital. In Brazil, there is a lack of empirical studies aimed at testing the channels through which inequality affects growth, therefore this research gains significance. The results presented here were drawn from family household survey – POF – undertaken by the IBGE. Data has evidenced that education investments grow as a percentage of the total budget with raises of income. Raises in income for very high income classes do not increase education spending. The data suggests the existence of a budget constraint for low and middle class Brazilians from all regions. It has been found strong evidence that low and middle income classes in Brazil have limited access to credit-markets. Therefore, there is evidence that redistribution would increase aggregate spending on education.
Investimentos em capital humano são essenciais para o desenvolvimento econômico de um pais. No Brasil, diversas fontes apontam para a falta de mão de obra qualificada como sendo uma das causas de um fraco crescimento econômico. Esta dissertação explora as teorias que ligam desigualdade de renda com performance econômica. A parte empírica se foca em uma das teorias apresentadas, a de imperfeições no mercado de credito. De acordo com esta teoria, mercados de credito imperfeitos são fracos alocadores de recursos e não possibilitam que indivíduos de baixa renda invistam no próprio capital humano. No Brasil, há uma escassez de estudos empíricos focados em testar os canais através dos quais a desigualdade de renda afeta o crescimento, trazendo significância para esta dissertação. Os resultados apresentados aqui foram obtidos através da pesquisa familiar – POF – realizada pelo IBGE. Os dados mostram que investimentos em educação crescem como percentual do orçamento com o aumento da renda familiar. Aumentos de renda para classes de renda já elevadas não provocam igual aumento nas despesas educacionais. Os dados sugerem a existência de uma restrição orçamentária para Brasileiros de baixa e média renda independente da região. Foram encontradas fortes evidencias de que classes de baixa e média renda no Brasil tem acesso limitado ao mercado de credito. Portanto, existe evidencia de que redistribuição aumentaria o gasto agregado em educação.

This dissertation contributes to the current understanding of human capital and its importance for earnings inequality and taxation. Human capital is typically defined as the stock of knowledge or skills acquired through education and working experience. The first chapter analyzes student borrowing behaviors in postsecondary education in the United States, the second chapter studies cross-country differences in earnings inequality within an endogenous growth model of human capital accumulation, and the third chapter examines the impact of endogenous human capital formations over a life-cycle on optimal fiscal policy. In Chapter 1, I document that new federal student loans for higher education in the United States have risen more than 5 times over the past 20 years. What caused this dramatic increase? I develop a heterogeneous life-cycle model of human capital accumulation to analyze individual college and borrowing decisions. Using this framework, I assess the quantitative contributions of changes in the college wage premium, college costs, maximum borrowing limits, and loan interest rates to explain the significant rise of federal student loans. I find that the calibrated model accounts for 57 percent of the actual increase in loans from 1990 to 2011. Increases in the college wage premium and college costs are important factors in generating the sharp rise in loans and, particularly, the increase in the fraction of borrowers and borrowing amounts. The expansion of credit availability and decreased loan interest rates have a relatively minimal impact on individual college and borrowing decisions. Chapter 2 explores why earnings inequality has been substantially higher in the US than in European countries over the last 30 years. I focus on the role of differences in tax progressivity, intergenerational earnings persistence, returns to education investments, and public education spending. I develop a growth model of human capital accumulation, and show analytically how those factors affect the dynamics of earnings inequality. The calibrated model accounts for 31 percent of the observed differences in earnings inequality between European countries and the US for 2003-07. Differences in returns to education investments and intergenerational earnings persistence are quantitatively important, suggesting the potential role of educational policy in ameliorating rising earnings inequality. Chapter 3, written jointly with Martin Gervais, analyzes the role of endogenous human capital accumulation in shaping optimal fiscal policy within a life-cycle growth model. We show that when investment in human capital is not verifiable---making the tax code incomplete---a non-zero capital income tax becomes optimal in order to alleviate the distortionary effects of the labor income tax on investment in human capital. This is true even if the government has access to a full set of age-dependent labor and capital income taxes. The main result is in sharp contrast to the finding in Jones et al. (1997) that all interest taxes are zero in infinitely-lived agent models with endogenous human capital formation.

Ces dernières décennies, la famille a connu des changements majeurs dans la majorité des pays de l’OCDE. D’une part, le taux de fertilité a baissé ; d’autre part, le nombre de séparation a fortement augmenté. Cette thèse se propose d’étudier les effets de ces changements de la structure familiale sur le capital humain des individus, en l’envisageant comme une nouvelle source d’inégalités. Dans un cadre micro-économique, cette thèse mobilise les outils économétriques pour les appliquer à de larges bases de données. Les trois chapitres de cette thèse présentent des résultats nouveaux sur l’effet de la séparation parentale et de la taille de la famille sur le capital humain de l’individu. Le premier chapitre porte sur l’effet de la séparation parentale en France sur la réussite professionnelle des individus, et montre un effet négatif de la séparation parentale sur le niveau d’étude et la position sociale de l’individu. En s’appuyant sur des données américaines, le second chapitre s’intéresse aux mécanismes expliquant cet effet, et en particulier, sur les changements du temps passé avec les parents. Ainsi, 30% de l’effet de la séparation parentale sur le développement socio-émotionnel des enfants serait expliqué par la baisse du temps passé avec au moins un parent présent. Le troisième chapitre considère un autre aspect de la structure familiale : la taille de la famille. Nous trouvons que l’arrivée d’un troisième enfant dans la famille diminue les compétences socio-émotionnelles des autres enfants, en particulier chez les filles
Family has known great transformations in the last decades in a large number of OECD countries. On one hand, fertility rates have decreased. On the other hand, the number of separations has increased sharply. This thesis asks whether these major changes of family structure affect child’s human capital, being a new source of inequalities. Using very large datasets and micro-econometric methods, the three chapters present original empirical evidence on whether parental separation and family size impact individual’s human capital. The first chapter studies the effect of parental separation in France on individual’s achievement, and find a negative effect of parental separation on individual’s educational attainment and social position. Using an American dataset, the second chapter asks whether this effect is driven by changes in time spent with parents, and find that 30% of the effect of parental separation on socio-emotional skills is explained by the decrease in time spent with at least one parent present. The third chapter accounts for another aspect of family structure: the number of children. Using a British dataset, we find that having a second sibling in the United Kingdom decreases the child’s socio-emotional skills, especially for girls

This dissertation explores the relationship between human capital, employment, and political activity. The first chapter studies the subject from a theoretical point of view, describing how underemployment of educated agents can lead to inefficient economic policies and political conflict due to increasing political instability. The second chapter presents empirical evidence of the positive relationship between human capital and the number of political mass events. The analysis is performed using a new dataset that covers the first-level administrative subdivision of several African countries and includes data on political activity, employment status, political and economic perceptions and expectations, and economic performance from sources such as ACLED, Afrobarometer, PRIO-grid project, Penn-Tables, and ILO. The identification strategy uses national level shocks to address endogeneity issues at the regional level. The last chapter investigates the relationship between higher education and political violence, focusing on the intensity of civil conflicts and the number and effectiveness of terrorist groups at the country level. The statistical analysis supports the hypothesis that, everything else equal, countries with larger stocks of human capital suffer from more intense civil conflicts and the presence of more numerous and effective terrorist groups.

In recent years, there has been a growing commitment to studying the economic lives of the poor by better understanding their psychological lives (Banerjee and Duflo, 2007; Schilbach et al., 2016). These developments stem from the failure to empirically detect poverty traps, which have been at the core of the development literature for decades (Dean et al., 2017). Instead, empirical studies document the existence of very large rates of returns to investment, which, however, are not matched by observed consumption growth rates (Kremer et al., 2019). Several behaviors of the poor, which do not fit with traditional models, puzzled economists. Why do poor micro-entrepreneurs keep borrowing at extremely high interest rates instead of saving some of their profit to borrow less with each passing day (Ananth et al., 2007)? If using fertilizer has such high rates of return, why don't poor farmers purchase it (Duflo et al., 2008)? If the poor remain poor because they do not get enough calories, why do they spend their money on other things besides food (Banerjee and Duflo, 2007)? Such questions led to the rise of the subfield of Behavioral Development Economics, which applies insights from psychology and behavioral economics to study the economic behavior of the poor; trying to explain why and how it departs from standard economic models. Behavioral biases, studied extensively in Behavioral Economics, may be much more consequential for the poor. Failing to resist to the temptation of a hedonistic reward after a hard day of work will have very different implications for a poor person than for a rich one. This thesis aims to contribute to this new strand of literature, in particular to one of its branches titled "the psychology of poverty", which studies the impact poverty has on cognitive function and economic behavior. One influential theory in this field is the scarcity/mental bandwidth theory (Mullainathan and Shafir, 2013), which states that poverty implies not only lack of financial resources, but also lack of mental resources to focus on other things besides pressing concerns. At any time, a poor person's mind will be preoccupied with worries about bills, school fees or health problems; and how to best manage all of them with very limited resources. While this makes the poor better at decisions regarding the pressing issue at hand (Mullainathan and Shafir, 2013), it also makes them neglect other important domains which may not appear urgent enough (Shah et al., 2012, 2015). While the theory may help explain many puzzling behaviors of the poor, up to now there has been little evidence on real-world economic outcomes. The first two chapters of this thesis try to bring the framework closer to real-world economic decisions even though restricted to the lab setting. The main challenge with studying the psychology of poverty outside the lab is the fact that even exogenous changes in income will affect several other channels besides mental bandwidth, making it very challenging to pin down the precise mechanism. Given this, the first two chapters are limited to varying mental bandwidth in a lab setting, keeping income fixed. The novel aspect is that the decisions participants make mimic closely everyday life purchasing decisions, involving real products. I note however, that due to limited funding and ethical considerations, in both chapters decisions are only weakly incentivized: only 1% of participants actually receive the goods they selected. The first chapter explores the relationship between the psychology of poverty, investment in human capital, and financial incentives. Empirical evidence indicates that the poor are less attentive parents, investing less in the human capital of their children (McLoyd, 1998; Evans, 2004). This contributes to the inter-generational transmission of poverty because investing in human capital has extremely high rates of return, highest in early childhood (Cunha and Heckman, 2007; Cunha et al., 2010). The question is why don't the poor invest more? Traditional answers to this question put the blame on lack of knowledge of parenting practices, wrong beliefs on the expected returns or lower altruism. We propose an alternative explanation based on the scarcity theory. Poor parents may fail to invest the required time and resources in their child because their minds are preoccupied with other more urgent concerns. When there is uncertainty about how the next bill will be paid, spending time doing educational activities with the child may shift out of focus. When such behaviors keep repeating on a regular basis, a gap emerges between poor and non-poor children in the amount of cognitive and emotional stimulation they receive. The challenge is how to test this hypothesis. Given the identification issues with disentangling such channels with observational data, we bring it to the lab. Parents of toddlers, living in the UK, are invited to participate in an online experiment. First, they are asked to answer how their family would deal with various hypothetical financial scenarios which vary in severity (hard for the treatment group, easy for the control group). Among the treated, the scenarios aim to bring financial worries to mind, trying to capture what people living in poverty experience on a regular basis. After completing the scenarios, parents receive a budget of pounds 30 to be spent as they choose in an experimental market on 3 types of goods: necessities, child investment goods, and luxury goods. Half of parents are incentivized to purchase more child investment goods by being offered a 50% discount. This treatment investigates if financial worries change how parents respond to such incentives, and is motivated by the results in Das et al. (2013) which find that accounting for household re-optimization in response to a policy is crucial when evaluating its effects. We find that the incentive increases investment in human capital among lower income parents only when financial worries are not salient. When worries become salient, low income parents do not invest more but instead use the additional money to increase their demand of necessities. In addition, they also lower their demand for luxury goods to zero. When no discount is offered, we do not find financial worries to lower investment, which is likely to be explained by floor effects. Among higher income parents, financial worries do not affect behavior. The effects among lower income participants are driven by those who were further away from their last paycheck at the time of the experiment - an indicator of real world monetary scarcity. This finding increases the external validity of our main results. The second chapter departs from studying the human capital of children, focusing instead on the human capital of adultsootnote{However, the behavior studied is likely to have negative externalities also on children (e.g. domestic violence).}. Addictive (or temptation) goods have been at the core of academic and policy debates for decades. With Becker and Murphy (1988), addiction was rationalized as a utility maximizing decision where the individual fully internalizes the costs of consuming such goods. In this framework, the only scope for intervention is to balance out the externalities -- the costs that individuals place on society through consumption decisions (e.g. healthcare costs). Gruber (2001) questioned theoretically and empirically the rational framework, showing that with inconsistent time preferences, individuals do not fully internalize the cost of their behavior. Further studies have confirmed these findings which increased the scope of policy interventions (Gruber and Kőszegi, 2004; O’Donoghue and Rabin, 2006; Allcott et al., 2019a). The most widely used policy tools to limit the over-consumption of temptation are "sin" taxes, popular among governments because they bring large revenues. However, such taxes have sparked debates regarding their effects on income distribution. Since the poor tend to spend a higher share of their budget on temptation, they are likely to pay a higher cost. On the other hand, they are also the ones expected to benefit more in terms of health by consuming less. Traditionally, such taxes were placed on tobacco and alcohol. Recently, several governments have started adding taxes also on the consumption of unhealthy foods, such as sugary drinks and beverages. Crucial to determining the effect of the tax is the elasticity of demand with respect to price and the degree to which individuals are not internalizing their choices (Allcott et al., 2019a). The second chapter integrates the economics of temptation with the scarcity theory, and investigates if financial worries affect (i) the demand for temptation and (ii) the elasticities of demand with respect to price (sin taxes). The first question is not straightforward in the scarcity framework. While poverty is scarcity of financial resources, it is also scarcity of immediate gratification. The poor have stressful lives and jobs which are often less rewarding and highly physically demanding. Compensating for these struggles is harder since they can only access a small set of potential alternatives to addictive goods (e.g. going to nice restaurant and travelling are not really in the choice set of the poor). Following a similar design as in the first chapter but with a less specific population (adults living in the UK), we randomly trigger financial worries before asking participants to choose between necessities and temptation goods in an experimental market. The basket of temptation goods offered includes tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy foods and we simulate "sin taxes" by randomly increasing the price of temptation by 10% or 20%. We find that triggering financial worries lowers the demand for temptation but also dampens demand elasticities. The effects are stronger among low income participants. When financial worries are salient, their demand curve is actually slightly upward sloping. The finding is puzzling: financial worries appear to limit over-consumption of temptation, but they also hurt the poor the most when additional taxes are introduced. We find suggestive evidence that both effects are mediated by an increased focus on urgent necessities. The first two chapters integrated the scarcity framework into public policies. The results are very consistent across studies and have clear policy implications. Among the poor, when monetary concerns are top of mind: (i) incentivizing investments in human capital may not achieve its desired outcome, (ii) (dis)incentivizing consumption of temptation through new taxes may harm the poor the most since they do not lower their demands in response to price increases, which leads, through taxation, to a transfer of funds from the poor to the nonpoor without having any corrective effects (see Bernheim and Rangel, 2004; Bernheim and Taubinsky, 2018). However, I must note that both chapters make only speculative policy recommendations given that they lack the normative counterfactual. Further research is needed to rigorously establish the welfare implications of financial worries. The third chapter takes a step back from economic decisions to studying how violence exposure affects cognitive function in children. Unfortunately violence and poverty are closely linked in a vicious cycle. Economically deprived neighborhoods are in general also more violent. In addition to monetary concerns, the minds of the poor are likely to be preoccupied with safety concerns. This study attempts to apply the framework in Mullainathan and Shafir (2013), focusing on security concerns instead of monetary ones. While the link between the scarcity framework and violence as scarcity of security is novel and up for debate, the chapter is closely connected with the literature on the impact of emotions on cognition and decision making (Loewenstein and Lerner, 2003; Lerner et al., 2003, 2015; Callen et al., 2014; Bogliacino et al., 2017). In a lab-in-the-field experiment, primary school children in El Salvador are randomly assigned to recall episodes of violence exposure before or after taking cognitive tests. I find that recalling violence exposure before taking the tests, increases cognitive performance by 0.2 standard deviations, effect significantly stronger for children reporting higher exposure. The estimates contrast previous findings on the effect of violence and cognitive function (Sharkey, 2010; Sharkey et al., 2012; Bogliacino et al., 2017) and call for further research in the field.

In recent years, there has been a growing commitment to studying the economic lives of the poor by better understanding their psychological lives (Banerjee and Duflo, 2007; Schilbach et al., 2016). These developments stem from the failure to empirically detect poverty traps, which have been at the core of the development literature for decades (Dean et al., 2017). Instead, empirical studies document the existence of very large rates of returns to investment, which, however, are not matched by observed consumption growth rates (Kremer et al., 2019). Several behaviors of the poor, which do not fit with traditional models, puzzled economists. Why do poor micro-entrepreneurs keep borrowing at extremely high interest rates instead of saving some of their profit to borrow less with each passing day (Ananth et al., 2007)? If using fertilizer has such high rates of return, why don't poor farmers purchase it (Duflo et al., 2008)? If the poor remain poor because they do not get enough calories, why do they spend their money on other things besides food (Banerjee and Duflo, 2007)? Such questions led to the rise of the subfield of Behavioral Development Economics, which applies insights from psychology and behavioral economics to study the economic behavior of the poor; trying to explain why and how it departs from standard economic models. Behavioral biases, studied extensively in Behavioral Economics, may be much more consequential for the poor. Failing to resist to the temptation of a hedonistic reward after a hard day of work will have very different implications for a poor person than for a rich one. This thesis aims to contribute to this new strand of literature, in particular to one of its branches titled "the psychology of poverty", which studies the impact poverty has on cognitive function and economic behavior. One influential theory in this field is the scarcity/mental bandwidth theory (Mullainathan and Shafir, 2013), which states that poverty implies not only lack of financial resources, but also lack of mental resources to focus on other things besides pressing concerns. At any time, a poor person's mind will be preoccupied with worries about bills, school fees or health problems; and how to best manage all of them with very limited resources. While this makes the poor better at decisions regarding the pressing issue at hand (Mullainathan and Shafir, 2013), it also makes them neglect other important domains which may not appear urgent enough (Shah et al., 2012, 2015). While the theory may help explain many puzzling behaviors of the poor, up to now there has been little evidence on real-world economic outcomes. The first two chapters of this thesis try to bring the framework closer to real-world economic decisions even though restricted to the lab setting. The main challenge with studying the psychology of poverty outside the lab is the fact that even exogenous changes in income will affect several other channels besides mental bandwidth, making it very challenging to pin down the precise mechanism. Given this, the first two chapters are limited to varying mental bandwidth in a lab setting, keeping income fixed. The novel aspect is that the decisions participants make mimic closely everyday life purchasing decisions, involving real products. I note however, that due to limited funding and ethical considerations, in both chapters decisions are only weakly incentivized: only 1% of participants actually receive the goods they selected. The first chapter explores the relationship between the psychology of poverty, investment in human capital, and financial incentives. Empirical evidence indicates that the poor are less attentive parents, investing less in the human capital of their children (McLoyd, 1998; Evans, 2004). This contributes to the inter-generational transmission of poverty because investing in human capital has extremely high rates of return, highest in early childhood (Cunha and Heckman, 2007; Cunha et al., 2010). The question is why don't the poor invest more? Traditional answers to this question put the blame on lack of knowledge of parenting practices, wrong beliefs on the expected returns or lower altruism. We propose an alternative explanation based on the scarcity theory. Poor parents may fail to invest the required time and resources in their child because their minds are preoccupied with other more urgent concerns. When there is uncertainty about how the next bill will be paid, spending time doing educational activities with the child may shift out of focus. When such behaviors keep repeating on a regular basis, a gap emerges between poor and non-poor children in the amount of cognitive and emotional stimulation they receive. The challenge is how to test this hypothesis. Given the identification issues with disentangling such channels with observational data, we bring it to the lab. Parents of toddlers, living in the UK, are invited to participate in an online experiment. First, they are asked to answer how their family would deal with various hypothetical financial scenarios which vary in severity (hard for the treatment group, easy for the control group). Among the treated, the scenarios aim to bring financial worries to mind, trying to capture what people living in poverty experience on a regular basis. After completing the scenarios, parents receive a budget of pounds 30 to be spent as they choose in an experimental market on 3 types of goods: necessities, child investment goods, and luxury goods. Half of parents are incentivized to purchase more child investment goods by being offered a 50% discount. This treatment investigates if financial worries change how parents respond to such incentives, and is motivated by the results in Das et al. (2013) which find that accounting for household re-optimization in response to a policy is crucial when evaluating its effects. We find that the incentive increases investment in human capital among lower income parents only when financial worries are not salient. When worries become salient, low income parents do not invest more but instead use the additional money to increase their demand of necessities. In addition, they also lower their demand for luxury goods to zero. When no discount is offered, we do not find financial worries to lower investment, which is likely to be explained by floor effects. Among higher income parents, financial worries do not affect behavior. The effects among lower income participants are driven by those who were further away from their last paycheck at the time of the experiment - an indicator of real world monetary scarcity. This finding increases the external validity of our main results. The second chapter departs from studying the human capital of children, focusing instead on the human capital of adultsootnote{However, the behavior studied is likely to have negative externalities also on children (e.g. domestic violence).}. Addictive (or temptation) goods have been at the core of academic and policy debates for decades. With Becker and Murphy (1988), addiction was rationalized as a utility maximizing decision where the individual fully internalizes the costs of consuming such goods. In this framework, the only scope for intervention is to balance out the externalities -- the costs that individuals place on society through consumption decisions (e.g. healthcare costs). Gruber (2001) questioned theoretically and empirically the rational framework, showing that with inconsistent time preferences, individuals do not fully internalize the cost of their behavior. Further studies have confirmed these findings which increased the scope of policy interventions (Gruber and Kőszegi, 2004; O’Donoghue and Rabin, 2006; Allcott et al., 2019a). The most widely used policy tools to limit the over-consumption of temptation are "sin" taxes, popular among governments because they bring large revenues. However, such taxes have sparked debates regarding their effects on income distribution. Since the poor tend to spend a higher share of their budget on temptation, they are likely to pay a higher cost. On the other hand, they are also the ones expected to benefit more in terms of health by consuming less. Traditionally, such taxes were placed on tobacco and alcohol. Recently, several governments have started adding taxes also on the consumption of unhealthy foods, such as sugary drinks and beverages. Crucial to determining the effect of the tax is the elasticity of demand with respect to price and the degree to which individuals are not internalizing their choices (Allcott et al., 2019a). The second chapter integrates the economics of temptation with the scarcity theory, and investigates if financial worries affect (i) the demand for temptation and (ii) the elasticities of demand with respect to price (sin taxes). The first question is not straightforward in the scarcity framework. While poverty is scarcity of financial resources, it is also scarcity of immediate gratification. The poor have stressful lives and jobs which are often less rewarding and highly physically demanding. Compensating for these struggles is harder since they can only access a small set of potential alternatives to addictive goods (e.g. going to nice restaurant and travelling are not really in the choice set of the poor). Following a similar design as in the first chapter but with a less specific population (adults living in the UK), we randomly trigger financial worries before asking participants to choose between necessities and temptation goods in an experimental market. The basket of temptation goods offered includes tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy foods and we simulate "sin taxes" by randomly increasing the price of temptation by 10% or 20%. We find that triggering financial worries lowers the demand for temptation but also dampens demand elasticities. The effects are stronger among low income participants. When financial worries are salient, their demand curve is actually slightly upward sloping. The finding is puzzling: financial worries appear to limit over-consumption of temptation, but they also hurt the poor the most when additional taxes are introduced. We find suggestive evidence that both effects are mediated by an increased focus on urgent necessities. The first two chapters integrated the scarcity framework into public policies. The results are very consistent across studies and have clear policy implications. Among the poor, when monetary concerns are top of mind: (i) incentivizing investments in human capital may not achieve its desired outcome, (ii) (dis)incentivizing consumption of temptation through new taxes may harm the poor the most since they do not lower their demands in response to price increases, which leads, through taxation, to a transfer of funds from the poor to the nonpoor without having any corrective effects (see Bernheim and Rangel, 2004; Bernheim and Taubinsky, 2018). However, I must note that both chapters make only speculative policy recommendations given that they lack the normative counterfactual. Further research is needed to rigorously establish the welfare implications of financial worries. The third chapter takes a step back from economic decisions to studying how violence exposure affects cognitive function in children. Unfortunately violence and poverty are closely linked in a vicious cycle. Economically deprived neighborhoods are in general also more violent. In addition to monetary concerns, the minds of the poor are likely to be preoccupied with safety concerns. This study attempts to apply the framework in Mullainathan and Shafir (2013), focusing on security concerns instead of monetary ones. While the link between the scarcity framework and violence as scarcity of security is novel and up for debate, the chapter is closely connected with the literature on the impact of emotions on cognition and decision making (Loewenstein and Lerner, 2003; Lerner et al., 2003, 2015; Callen et al., 2014; Bogliacino et al., 2017). In a lab-in-the-field experiment, primary school children in El Salvador are randomly assigned to recall episodes of violence exposure before or after taking cognitive tests. I find that recalling violence exposure before taking the tests, increases cognitive performance by 0.2 standard deviations, effect significantly stronger for children reporting higher exposure. The estimates contrast previous findings on the effect of violence and cognitive function (Sharkey, 2010; Sharkey et al., 2012; Bogliacino et al., 2017) and call for further research in the field.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005.
Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xii, 175 p.; also includes graphics. Includes bibliographical references (p. 165-175). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

A key question in entrepreneurship research is how certain individuals in different contexts are able to generate superior venture performance. Micro-entrepreneurs in emerging and transition economies lack access to various forms of capital to launch and grow new ventures, as they operate in settings characterised by resource scarcity and underdeveloped market institutions. To meet the need for tangible financial resources, lenders provide small loans to stimulate business development. Yet financial capital alone does not ensure successful business outcomes, raising questions as to how micro-entrepreneurs deploy intangible resources to drive growth. Based on in-person survey interviews conducted with 164 entrepreneurs receiving loans at community banks in Zhejiang Province, China, as well as qualitative field data, this study examines the impact of human capital, social capital, and psychological capital on the growth of micro-enterprises in China, with a focus on the moderating role of psychological capital. By integrating psychological capital with human capital and social network approaches, this study fills a research gap at the intersections of these three perspectives. The contributions of this study include establishing boundary conditions for these theories to explain how entrepreneurs overcome resource scarcity to grow ventures within a relational society undergoing a transition to a market economy.

This dissertation comprises three chapters on the intersection between gender, development and human capital investments. The first chapter explores the impact of the rapid expansion of the Cambodian garment industry on women’s and children’s well being. It documents a sizeable increase in schooling at early ages, but also increased secondary dropouts. It also demonstrates that the growth of garment manufacturing is associated with delays in marriage and childbearing, and potentially long-lasting improvements in girls’ height. The second chapter uses a natural experiment from an Australian state and shows that relaxing compulsory mathematics and science requirements widens the gender gap in high-school STEM subject uptake. It also documents a positive externality from compulsory mathematics requirements on the uptake of science subjects, which is consistent with a setting in which it is costly to study science without any mathematics. The third chapter presents evidence that the growth of private primary schooling may have negative implications for equality in educational opportunities and learning outcomes in rural India.
Esta disertación comprende tres capítulos sobre la intersección entre género, desarrollo e inversiones en capital humano. El primer capítulo explora el impacto de la rápida expansión de la industria de la confección de Camboya en el bienestar de las mujeres y los niños. Documenta un aumento considerable de la escolarización a edades tempranas, pero también un aumento de la deserción en la secundaria. También demuestra que el crecimiento de la fabricación de prendas de vestir está asociado con retrasos en el matrimonio y la maternidad y mejoras potencialmen- te duraderas en la altura de las niñas. El segundo capítulo utiliza un experimento natural de un estado australiano y muestra que la relajación de los requisitos obligatorios de matemáticas y ciencias ampíıa la brecha de género en la captacióin de materias STEM en la escuela secundaria. También documenta una externalidad positiva de los requisitos matemáticos obligatorios en la adopción de asignaturas de ciencias, lo cual es consistente con un entorno en el que es costoso estudiar ciencias sin matemáticas. El tercer capítulo presenta evidencia del crecimiento de la educación primaria privada que puede tener implicaciones negativas para la igualdad en las oportunidades educativas y los resultados del aprendizaje en la India rural.

Nous proposons, à l’aide d’une approche pluridisciplinaire, de mieux rendre compte des compétences entrepreneuriales d’un dirigeant de PME, de jeter les bases d’un modèle d’évaluation de la capacité à entreprendre à partir de l’analyse des cycles d’exploitation. Ce modèle sera construit sur les bases d’une enquête exploratoire, puis testé au sein d’une PME de négoce afin d’en vérifier la pertinence et d’en améliorer l’applicabilité.Une estimation pertinente de la capacité à entreprendre pourrait rendre possible une meilleure évaluation de la valeur ajoutée des dirigeants de PME et une esquisse plus précise de la stratégie de soutien aux actions entrepreneuriales. Evaluer la capacité à entreprendre est tout autant un défi pour la communauté financière et comptable que l’est l’évaluation du capital humain. La présente propose une nouvelle approche pour mieux aborder la "vraie" valeur d’une entreprise, avec l’espoir que notre modèle sera utile aux parties prenantes de l’entrepreneuriat
We suggest, by means of a multidisciplinary approach, reporting better entrepreneurial skills of a leader of SME, to lay the foundations for a model of evaluation of the capacity to be undertaken from the analysis of the cycles of exploitation. This model will be built on the bases of an exploratory investigation, then tested within a trade SME to verify the relevance and improve the applicability.A relevant estimation of the capacity to be undertaken could make possible a better evaluation of the added value of the leaders of SME and a more precise sketch of the strategy of support for the entrepreneurial actions To estimate the capacity to be undertaken is just as much a challenge for the financial and accounting community than is it the evaluation of the human resources. The present proposes a new approach to approach better the "real" value of a company, with the hope than our model will be useful for the stakeholders of the entrepreneurship