The Human Capital Initiative focuses on understanding the productive potential embodied in individuals – their skills, health, and other capabilities. Particularly in developing countries, this is the main asset people own. The initiative focuses on two questions:
1. What are the factors that shape individuals’ accumulation of human capital? We investigate what factors lead people to invest in health or education for themselves, for their family members, or their fellow citizens, as well as how the structure of education and health markets affects countries’ levels of human capital.
2. What are the consequences of such investments for economic outcomes? This question encompasses issues such as to the extent to which increased human capital raises people’s wages, and the extent to which it enhances countries’ economic growth.
The Human Capital Initiative is led by CDEP Co-Director Cristian Pop-Eleches.
Current Projects:
(jump to completed projects)
Assymetric Information in the Household: Fathers and Child Welfare
Investigators: CDEP Affiliate Anja Tolonen.
Schooling, Stigma and Periods Among Adolescent Girls in Tanzania
Investigators: CDEP Affiliate Anja Tolonen.
Externalities and Complementarities of AIDS Prevention Interventions: Evidence from Malawian Secondary Schools
Investigators: CDEP Co-Director Cristian Pop-Eleches, CDEP Student Affiliate Booyuel Kim, and Hyuncheol Kim of Cornell University.
Teacher-Student Interactions and Child Outcomes: Evidence from Romanian Secondary Schools
Investigators: CDEP Co-Director Cristian Pop-Eleches, CDEP Affiliate Miguel Urquiola, and Ofer Malamud of the University of Chicago.
Understanding Human Capital Accumulation in Developing Countries: A Field Experiment with Adaptive Technologies
Investigators: Supreet Kaur, Heather Schofield of the University of Pennsylvania and Sidra Rehman, PhD candidate, Columbia University.
Completed Projects:
Does Universalization of Health Work? Evidence from Health Systems Restructuring and Maternal and Child Health in Brazil
Investigators: CDEP Afflilate Rodrigo Soares.
Climate Change, Health and Gender Gaps in Human Capital Investment
Investigators: CDEP Afflilate Belinda Archibong and CDEP Fellow Francis Annan.
Financial Incentives and the Fertility-Sex Ratio Trade-Off
Investigators: CDEP Fellow S Anukriti.
Selection on Ability and the Early Career Growth in the Gender Wage Gap
Investigators: CDEP Afflilate Rodrigo Soares.
Getting the Poor to Enroll in Health Insurance and its Effects on their Health: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment in Ghana
Investigators: CDEP Fellows Patrick Asuming and Hyuncheol Kim.
The Big Sort: College Reputation and Labor Market Outcomes
Investigators: CDEP Affiliates Bentley MacLeod and Miguel Urquiola, CDEP Student Affiliate Evan Riehl of Columbia University and Juan Saavedra of the University of Southern California.
Nominal Wage Rigidity in Village Labor Markets
Investigator: Supreet Kaur.
Human Capital
Firms and Innovation![By Jonathan Alpeyrie (by user:jalpeyrie (via email)) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/002_Oromo_Liberation_Front_rebels.JPG)
