Wages and Employment in the United States and Germany:What Explains the Differences?

2003 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 573-602 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Beaudry ◽  
David A Green
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
Wage Inequality ◽  
Physical Capital ◽  
The United States ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Parallel Fashion

Over the last 20 years the wage-education relationships in the United States and Germany have evolved very differently, while the education compositions of employment have evolved in a parallel fashion. In this paper, we show how these patterns shed light on the nature of recent technological change and highlight the importance of taking into account movements in the ratio of human capital to physical capital when examining changes in the returns to skill. Our analysis indicates that the United States could have prevented the increase in wage inequality observed in the 1980's by a faster accumulation of physical capital.

scholarly journals The Middle East and the United States: A Problem of “Brain Drain”

1977 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hossein G. Askari ◽  
John Thomas Cummings
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
National Income ◽  
Physical Capital ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrialized Nations ◽  
Managerial Knowledge ◽  
Determinants Of Economic Growth ◽  
And Training

In explaining the determinants of economic growth, economists have attempted to distinguish the relative contributions made by various inputs. Theodore Schultz concluded that improvements in human capital have made larger contributions to growth than increases in physical capital. E. F. Denison was even more specific in his pioneering studies of changes in real national income in the United States from 1927 to 1967, estimating that 23 percent of the growth could be explained by improvements in the educational level of the labor force and 20 percent by advances in technological and managerial knowledge. On the basis of such results, we may conclude that expenditures on education and training, public health, and general research contribute significantly to productivity in the industrialized nations by raising the quality of human capital; thus these outlays command a continuing return in the future.

Wage Dispersion in Finland: Searching for Human Capital

2007 ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Hannu Piekkola
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Wage Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Heterogeneity ◽  
Wage Dispersion ◽  
Major Increase ◽  
D Investment ◽  
Productive Worker ◽  
Boom Period

In Finland, shifts in compensation have been of a kind comparable to those in the United States, similar but with a moderate, increasing wage variance between plants, an increasing gap between average non-productive- and productive-worker wages, and an increasing share of non-production workers. In the boom period of 1995- 1998 the education premium rose. Despite the rise in individual heterogeneity, there has been no major increase in wage dispersion. The entire rise in wage dispersion has taken place between plants, while the education premium dispersion has risen mainly within plants. At the same time, the distribution of capital and Research and Development (R&D) investment across firms has worked in the direction of mitigating wage inequality.

scholarly journals Sustainability and the measurement of wealth

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth J. Arrow ◽  
Partha Dasgupta ◽  
Lawrence H. Goulder ◽  
Kevin J. Mumford ◽  
Kirsten Oleson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
Natural Capital ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Health Capital ◽  
Over Time

AbstractWe develop and apply a consistent and comprehensive theoretical framework for assessing whether economic growth is compatible with sustaining wellbeing over time. Our approach differs from earlier approaches by concentrating on wealth rather than income. Sustainability is demonstrated by showing that a properly defined comprehensive measure of wealth is maintained through time. Our wealth measure is unusually comprehensive, capturing not only reproducible and human capital but also natural capital, health improvements and technological change. We apply the framework to five countries: the United States, China, Brazil, India and Venezuela. We show that the often-neglected contributors to wealth – technological change, natural capital and health capital – fundamentally affect the conclusions one draws about whether given nations are achieving sustainability. Indeed, even countries that display sustainability differ considerably in the kinds of capital that contribute to it.

How Important Is Human Capital for Development? Evidence from Immigrant Earnings

2002 ◽  
Vol 92 (1) ◽  
pp. 198-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lutz Hendricks
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Physical Capital ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigrant Workers ◽  
Output Gap ◽  
Capital Account ◽  
Income Differences ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
New Evidence

This paper offers new evidence on the sources of cross-country income differences. It exploits the idea that observing immigrant workers from different countries in the same labor market provides an opportunity to estimate their human-capital endowments. These estimates suggest that human and physical capital account for only a fraction of cross-country income differences. For countries below 40 percent of U.S. output per worker, less than half of the output gap relative to the United States is attributed to human and physical capital.

James Bryce and the Australian Constitution

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-200
Author(s):  
Stephen Gageler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Constitutional Development ◽  
Practical Operation ◽  
Responsible Government ◽  
Shed Light

James Bryce was a contemporary of Albert Venn Dicey. Bryce published in 1888 The American Commonwealth. Its detailed description of the practical operation of the United States Constitution was influential in the framing of the Australian Constitution in the 1890s. The project of this article is to shed light on that influence. The article compares and contrasts the views of Bryce and of Dicey; Bryce's views, unlike those of Dicey, having been largely unexplored in contemporary analyses of our constitutional development. It examines the importance of Bryce's views on two particular constitutional mechanisms – responsible government and judicial review – to the development of our constitutional structure. The ongoing theoretical implications of The American Commonwealth for Australian constitutional law remain to be pondered.

A HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF DEPRECIATION ACCOUNTING — THE UNITED STATES STEEL EXPERIENCE

1989 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Auman Reed
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Physical Capital ◽  
Cost Accounting ◽  
The United States ◽  
Reporting Bias ◽  
Productive Capacity ◽  
Replacement Cost ◽  
Historical Cost ◽  
Steel Corporation

This paper examines the magnitude of the reporting bias inherent in the historical cost accounting of a firm's physical capital. Reported depreciation data pertaining to U.S. Steel Corporation (currently USX) between 1939 and 1987 are compared with standardized historical cost figures and replacement cost estimates. The findings suggest that replacement cost depreciation would have provided more information about U.S. Steel's ability to maintain its productive capacity than historical cost depreciation did. Thus, this analysis provides an illustration of one of the primary arguments for replacement cost accounting.

Immigrant Entrepreneurship: The Effect of Early Career Immigration Constraints on New Venture Formation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajshree Agarwal ◽  
Martin Ganco ◽  
Joseph Raffiee
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
New Venture ◽  
Opportunity Costs ◽  
Paid Employment ◽  
Specialized Human Capital ◽  
New Venture Formation

We examine how institutional factors may affect microlevel career decisions by individuals to create new firms by impacting their ability to exercise entrepreneurial preferences, their accumulation of human capital, and the opportunity costs associated with new venture formation. We focus on an important institutional factor—immigration-related work constraints—given that technologically intensive firms in the United States not only draw upon immigrants as knowledge workers but also because such firms are disproportionately founded by immigrants. We examine the implications of these constraints using the National Science Foundation’s Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System, which tracks the careers of science and engineering graduates from U.S. universities. Relative to natives, we theorize and show that immigration-related work constraints in the United States suppress entrepreneurship as an early career choice of immigrants by restricting labor market options to paid employment jobs in organizational contexts tightly matched with the immigrant’s educational training (job-education match). Work experience in paid employment job-education match is associated with the accumulation of specialized human capital and increased opportunity costs associated with new venture formation. Consistent with immigration-related work constraints inhibiting individuals with entrepreneurial preferences from engaging in entrepreneurship, we show that when the immigration-related work constraints are released, immigrants in job-education match are more likely than comparable natives to found incorporated employer firms. Incorporated employer firms can both leverage specialized human capital and provide the expected returns needed to justify the increased opportunity costs associated with entrepreneurial entry. We discuss our study’s contributions to theory and practice.

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