Research Details

Abstract

This paper reconsiders the traditional approach to human capital measurement in the study of cross-country income di§erences. Within a broader class of neoclassical human capital aggregators, traditional accounting is found to be a theoretical lower bound on human capital di§erences across economies. Implementing a generalized accounting empirically illustrates the possibility that capital variation may now account (even fully) for the large income variation between rich and poor countries. These Öndings reject the constraints on human capital variation that traditional accounting has imposed.

Type

Article

Author(s)

Date Published

2014

Citations

. 2014. The Human Capital Stock: A Generalized Approach. American Economic Review.(11)