American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
The Human Capital Stock: A Generalized Approach: Comment
American Economic Review
vol. 109,
no. 3, March 2019
(pp. 1155–74)
Abstract
Jones (2014) examines development accounting with imperfect substitutability between different types of skills in the production of output. He finds that human capital variation can account for the totality of the variation in income across countries. We show that this finding is entirely due to an assumption that the relative wage of skilled workers is solely determined by attributes of workers (once the supply of skilled workers is accounted for). If skill premia are predominantly determined by technology, institutions, and other features of the economic environment, human capital differences explain none of the variation in income per worker.Citation
Caselli, Francesco, and Antonio Ciccone. 2019. "The Human Capital Stock: A Generalized Approach: Comment." American Economic Review 109 (3): 1155–74. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20171787Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- E24 Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
- I26 Returns to Education
- J24 Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
- J31 Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials