Human capital: a perspective from the education and work experience

Abstract

In the classical economic analysis there are production factors like land, capital, and labor. Usually, it has been understood that capital includes factors such as investment in assets and machinery. It has been considered only recently that capital can consist of assets of immaterial character as well, and that it can reside in the minds of those who make the acquisition of physical assets possible; it is inside these immaterial assets that human capital is located.
In this project, the foundations of human capital are presented, alongside other factors relative to the human being as a production factor. It starts by offering a vision of the main theoretical contributions on education and labor experience up until the Sixties, when the term “human capital “ is truly put into circulation; in the following section the main theoretical contributions are enunciated and explained, beginning with Robert Solow (1957), and touching on Denisson. E, F. (1962), Theodore W. Schultz (1961), Gary Becker (1964), and Jacob Mincer (1974).