Thesis (M. Soc. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1984.

The stock of human capital plays an important role for a sustained economic development, both at the individual and the country level. In order to prosper as a middle income country Vietnam need to increase the nation ́s human capital stock and this thesis shows that human capital theory holds for investments in years of education, knowledge of a foreign language and experience. Human capital investments, such as educational attainment and knowledge of a foreign language, are estimated to have significant impact on earnings in year 2012. Subjective evidence through interviews and observations are used to understand the underlying interpretation of these results in order to see how the labor market actually works in Vietnam.

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1984. / Also available in print.

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Graduate School of Management, 2004. / "December 2003". Bibliography: p. 210-272.

Very few empirical studies have attempted to study the impact of foreign direct investment and its interaction with human capital on poverty alleviation in developing countries. This paper attempts to fill this gap and contribute to the literature on FDI, human capital and poverty by not only disentangling the effects of FDI on poverty but also examining this effect in the presence of human capital.

South Africa faces significant challenges with low economic growth and high unemployment rates. Unemployed individuals find it difficult to enter into the informal and formal sectors and are often required to work as day labourers. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the human capital theory can provide an explanation for the determinants of wages of day labourers. A focus was placed on the relationships between wages and education, wages and training, wages and skills, and wages and experience. Using cross-sectional data from a survey conducted in 2007/2008, a regression analysis of these relationships was performed. The results showed that earnings increase with an increase in educational level. Day labourers who completed primary and secondary schooling earn more than day labourers who have had no schooling. The day labourers who completed a post-school qualification realised the highest returns in wages. A small percentage of day labourers indicated that they completed a form of training. A pattern was evident of day labourers with higher levels of education engaging in training that is associated with scarce work that requires higher levels of skills and that is more likely to pay higher wages. Work in the skilled cluster was found to be positively and significantly associated with wages. Day labourers who are able to do a variety of jobs are also likely to earn higher earnings. Experience was represented by the number of years an individual has worked as a day labourer and was found to be negatively associated with wages. The findings of this paper confirm that most of the human capital theory can be applied to explain the wages of day labourers in South Africa. / MCom (Economics), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

South Africa faces significant challenges with low economic growth and high unemployment rates. Unemployed individuals find it difficult to enter into the informal and formal sectors and are often required to work as day labourers. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the human capital theory can provide an explanation for the determinants of wages of day labourers. A focus was placed on the relationships between wages and education, wages and training, wages and skills, and wages and experience. Using cross-sectional data from a survey conducted in 2007/2008, a regression analysis of these relationships was performed. The results showed that earnings increase with an increase in educational level. Day labourers who completed primary and secondary schooling earn more than day labourers who have had no schooling. The day labourers who completed a post-school qualification realised the highest returns in wages. A small percentage of day labourers indicated that they completed a form of training. A pattern was evident of day labourers with higher levels of education engaging in training that is associated with scarce work that requires higher levels of skills and that is more likely to pay higher wages. Work in the skilled cluster was found to be positively and significantly associated with wages. Day labourers who are able to do a variety of jobs are also likely to earn higher earnings. Experience was represented by the number of years an individual has worked as a day labourer and was found to be negatively associated with wages. The findings of this paper confirm that most of the human capital theory can be applied to explain the wages of day labourers in South Africa. / MCom (Economics), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Economics / William F. Blankenau / The first essay examines the allocation of education spending. Human capital investment in early childhood can lead to large and persistent gains. Beyond this window of opportunity, human capital accumulation is more costly. Despite this, government education spending is allocated disproportionately toward late childhood and young adulthood. The consequences of a reallocation are examined using an overlapping generations model with private and public spending on early and late childhood education. Taking as given the higher returns to early investment, the model shows the current allocation may nonetheless be appropriate. With a homogeneous population, this can hold for moderate levels of government spending. With heterogeneity, this can hold for middle income workers. Lower income workers, by contrast, may benefit from a reallocation. The second essay provides a detailed review of the human capital proxies used in growth regressions. Economic theory and intuition tells us that human capital is important for economic growth, and now most empirical growth studies include a human capital component. Human capital is a complex concept that is difficult to quantify in a single measure. A number of proxies have been proposed, with most focusing on an aspect of education. The consensus is that human capital is poorly proxied. For each of the most commonly used measures, I give a description, discuss trends, summarize the literature and results, compare advantages and disadvantages, and list data sets. This review will serve as a useful reference for any researcher including human capital in a growth regression. The final essay explores the importance of a variety of human capital measures for growth using the Bayesian Averaging of Classical Estimates (BACE) approach proposed by Sala-i-Martin, Doppelhofer, and Miller (2004). BACE combines standard Bayesian methods with the classical approach to address the problem of model uncertainty. A new data set is constructed that includes 35 human capital variables. The analysis shows that multiple human capital measures are robustly significant for growth. Some of these variables are IQ scores, the duration of primary and secondary education, average years of primary education, average years of female higher education, and higher education enrollment.

Published Article / The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between job satisfaction and work ethics using participants from a South African and Zimbabwean University. 200 participants took part in the study. 60 academic and 40 non-academic members of staff were randomly drawn from each of two universities, one form each country. Significant correlations were reported between overall satisfaction and having a lot of money and investing it, working like a slave at everything one does until satisfaction, hard and succeeding, life meaningfulness and leisure time, leisure time interesting than work, and learning better on the job by striking out boldly on their own than by following the advice of others. Overall, a comparison between the South African and Zimbabwean group showed that the two groups differ on 25 out of the 65 variables with the South African group exhibiting higher mean scores.

This paper develops a spatial theoretical growth model in order to study the impact of physical and human capital relocations on the growth of open economies. Analytical and simulation results show how the respective neighbours determine an economy's development, why convergence and divergence may alternate in the medium-run, and that interregional migration as a consequence of wage inequalities causes disparities to prevail in the long-run. The empirical part applies spatial econometric specifications for European regions on the NUTS2 level for the observation period 2000-2010. The estimations underline the importance of human capital endowments and its relation with spatial location. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers in Regional Science