No description available.

The purpose with this thesis was to examine the most significant factors that affect the number of patents applications submitted on a municipality level in Sweden, with the objective to find the most significant of them. Three factors was chosen and analyzed more closely. The three factors was, investments in R&D made by firms, share of human capital and investments in R&D made by universities. Theses factors was tested against the dependent variable patent applications in three hypothesis and a stepwise regression model was conducted, with the objective to find the most significant variable. The result of the study, shows that not all of the factors had a positive effect on the number of patent applications, further the study indicated that the most significant factor for a municipality in order to have a high number of patent applications, was to have a high share of human capital.

This thesis attempts to determine the efficiency and impact of transfer fee expenditures on a club’s future performance in English professional soccer. Using net transfer fee activity data from the 2002-2011 period for the clubs in the top two divisions of English professional soccer, The Barclays Premier League (tier one) and the nPower Championship (tier two), in comparison with financial performance and league performance data over the same period, this paper will explore the implications of investing in human capital via the transfer market. Using correlation matrices and ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions as a means of analyzing both club-level and individual player-level datasets, this thesis strives to determine whether transfer activity has an impact on league success (now or in the future) or on key financial indicators that denote a club’s financial health. Ultimately, this thesis will demonstrate that transfer activity in isolation cannot be viewed as a component that definitively decides a club’s level of success, whether that be on the field or in the books.

<p>Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2010. Felaktigt angivet år på spikbladet</p>

Federal education policy has targeted children who are disadvantaged in order to improve their academic performance. The most recent federal education policy is the No Child Left Behind law signed by President Bush in 2001. Indicators often used to identify an at-risk youth range from economic, personal, family, and neighborhood characteristics. A probit model is used in this study to estimate the probability that a student graduates from high school as a function of 8th grade variables. Students are classified as at-risk of dropping out of high school or non at-risk based on having one or more risk factor. The main measures of academic outcomes are high school completion and post-secondary academic achievements. The main measures of labor market outcomes are short-term and long-term earnings. The results show that a student who comes from a low income family, has a sibling who dropped out, has parents with low education, is home alone after school for three hours or more, or comes from a step family in the eighth grade is at-risk of dropping out of high school. At-risk students are less likely than non at-risk students to graduate from high school. They appear to be more sensitive to existing conditions that may impair/assist their academic progress while they are in high school. At-risk students are also less likely to select a bachelor’s degree. When they are compared to comparable non at-risk students, a greater percentage of at-risk students select a bachelor’s degree or post-graduate degrees than non at-risk students. At-risk individuals face long-term disadvantage in the labor market, receiving lower wage offers than the non at-risk group. Comparing only those without post secondary education shows that the average earnings offered to at-risk individuals were lower than those offered to non at-risk individuals. At-risk college graduates also receive lower earnings than non at-risk college graduates. The wage differential is largely due to the disadvantage at-risk individuals face in the labor market.

La actual crisis económica ha reabierto el debate sobre la importancia de la productividad empresarial en el crecimiento económico de una región. Es en este contexto que el análisis de los factores que contribuyen en la mejora de la productividad empresarial se ha convertido en un elemento esencial, especialmente en las regiones con bajos niveles de productividad, como por ejemple Cataluña. El objetivo de esta tesis es analizar los efectos del capital humano en la productividad empresarial en el contexto de las pequeñas y medianas empresas Catalanas, considerando la posible existencia de sinergias entre el capital humano y otros factores productivos como pueden ser el capital tecnológico o las nuevas prácticas organizativas del trabajo. Adicionalmente, esta tesis también incluye un análisis sobre como las pequeñas y medianas empresas ajustan sus niveles de capital human con la finalidad de dar una mejor respuesta al nuevo contexto competitivo con el que se enfrentan. / The debate over the relevance of firm productivity to economic growth has been reviewed as a consequence of the current economic crisis. In this context, the analysis of elements that contribute to improve firm productivity becomes more important, especially in regions with low productivity levels, such as Catalonia. The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the effects of human capital on firm productivity in the context of Catalan SMEs, taking into account the existent synergies between human capital and other production factors such as, technological capital or the new work organisational practices. Additionally, this thesis also includes an analysis of how SMEs adjust their human capital levels in order to give a better answer to the new competitive context.

Health is one of the most important components of human capital. It can affect production level of a country through various channels. In this study the causal relationship of health and real GDP per capita income in 5 low income countries of Africa south of the Sahara is analyzed using granger causality test. Unbalanced panel data set during the year 1970 to 2009 is used. Life expectancy and mortality rate are used as a proxy for health. The result revealed that mortality rate has a significant and negative impact on real per capita income. The Granger causality test showed, real GDP per capita and mortality rate have causal or bidirectional relationship. On the other hand, real GDP per capita does not granger cause life expectancy, but life expectancy granger cause real GDP per capita. The comparative descriptive analysis of the health indicators in different income groups of the world also showed that, higher income countries are better off in their health status.

No description available.

<p>I study the effect of human capital on firms' leverage decisions in a structural dynamic model. Firms produce using physical capital and labor. They pay a cost per employee they hire, thus investing in human capital. In default a portion of this human capital investment is lost. The loss of human capital constitutes a significant cost of financial distress. Labor intensive firms are more heavily exposed to this cost and respond by using less leverage. Thus the model predicts a decreasing relationship between leverage and labor intensity. Consistent with this prediction, I show in the data that high labor intensity leads to significantly less use of debt. In the model a move from the lowest to the highest decile of labor intensity is accompanied by a drop in leverage of 21 percentage points, very close to the 27 percentage point drop in the data. Overall, I argue that human capital has an important effect on firm leverage and should receive more attention from capital structure researchers.</p><p>Furthermore, I study a two-period contracting problem in which entrepreneurs need financing but have limited commitment. If an entrepreneur chooses to default, he can divert a proportion of the project's output. Entrepreneurs are heterogeneous with respect to their ability to divert output. In particular, I focus on the special case with only two types of entrepreneurs. "Opportunistic'' entrepreneurs can divert output, but "dependable'' entrepreneurs cannot. I find that, if the proportion of dependable entrepreneurs is sufficiently high, it is optimal to write contracts that induce second period default by the opportunistic entrepreneurs. This critical proportion generally decreases with the severity of the agency problem. The model delivers both cross-sectional and time-series predictions about default, investment, and output.</p> / Dissertation

With the global environment changed rapidly, traditional sources of competitive advantage can no longer provide a sustainable strength for business, the approach to global business strategy point to core competencies, invisible assets, and organizational capabilities as key factors influencing MNC¡¦s long-term success in global markets. Benefited by resource-based view (RBV), strategic human resource management (SHRM), and organization behavior (OB) theories as theoretical groundwork, and our contributions include of (1) We built up a theoretical framework from the perspective of human capital to investigate how learning organizational capital facilites firm¡¦s innovative capabilities through human capital flexibility as a mediator. (2) Define human capital flexibility and its seven dimentions. (3) Define learning organizational capital with three dimensions derived from human capital perspective of knowledge-based literatures. Using sample of 184 subsidiaries of Taiwanese MNCs with SEM technique, our empirical result further indicates that human capital flexibility and learning organizational capital has positive effects on firm¡¦s innovative capabilities. Also, human capital flexibility plays a key role as a strong mediator that enhanced organizational capital to exert firm¡¦s innovative capabilities