https://www.sfu.ca/~wainwrig/Econ400/jensen-meckling.pdf

Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure

In this paper, the concept of social capital is introduced and illustrated, its forms are described, the social structural conditions under which it arises are examined, and it is used in an analys...

/pdf/social-capital-in-the-creation-of-human-capital-1836wo2872.pdf

Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital

The social world is accumulated history, and if it is not to be reduced to a discontinuous series of instantaneous mechanical equilibria between agents who are treated as interchangeable particles, one must reintroduce into it the notion of capital and with it, accumulation and all its effects. Capital is accumulated labor (in its materialized form or its ‘incorporated,’ embodied form) which, when appropriated on a private, i.e., exclusive, basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in the form of reified or living labor. It is a vis insita, a force inscribed in objective or subjective structures, but it is also a lex insita, the principle underlying the immanent regularities of the social world. It is what makes the games of society – not least, the economic game – something other than simple games of chance offering at every moment the possibility of a miracle. Roulette, which holds out the opportunity of winning a lot of money in a short space of time, and therefore of changing one’s social status quasi-instantaneously, and in which the winning of the previous spin of the wheel can be staked and lost at every new spin, gives a fairly accurate image of this imaginary universe of perfect competition or perfect equality of opportunity, a world without inertia, without accumulation, without heredity or acquired properties, in which every moment is perfectly independent of the previous one, every soldier has a marshal’s baton in his knapsack, and every prize can be attained, instantaneously, by everyone, so that at each moment anyone can become anything. Capital, which, in its objectified or embodied forms, takes time to accumulate and which, as a potential capacity to produce profits and to reproduce itself in identical or expanded form, contains a tendency to persist in its being, is a force inscribed in the objectivity of things so that everything is not equally possible or impossible. And the structure of the distribution of the different types and subtypes of capital at a given moment in time represents the immanent structure of the social world, i.e. , the set of constraints, inscribed in the very reality of that world, which govern its functioning in a durable way, determining the chances of success for practices.

Forms of Capital

This paper considers the prospects for constructing a neoclassical theory of growth and international trade that is consistent with some of the main features of economic development. Three models are considered and compared to evidence: a model emphasizing physical capital accumulation and technological change, a model emphasizing human capital accumulation through schooling, and a model emphasizing specialized human capital accumulation through learning-by-doing.

The mechanics of economic development

http://individual.utoronto.ca/zheli/sa1.pdf

On the mechanics of economic development

Investment in Human Capital: Rates of Return

Children are born with their genetic makeup and their experiences in the womb, but are largely a tabula rasa compared to the effects of a lifetime of future experiences. One does not have to accept the Freudian emphasis on very early childhood and early sexual fantasies to believe that childhood and teen-age experiences have an enormous influence on adult preferences. Basic values, preferences in food and clothing, attitudes toward the opposite sex, ambitions, and other parts of preferences all get influenced by what happens to a person when young. And no one has a greater influence on preference formation than parents and other close relatives. They usually determine practically all the experiences of children during their first few years of life, and many of their experiences through the teens. What parents do and do not do has a great influence on the preference formation of their children. Most parents are aware of this, if only vaguely. To the extent they care about what their children’s preferences will be, they incorporate the effects on children in their decisions concerning what they do. For example, if their smoking raises the likelihood that their children smoke, they may decide not to smoke because they do not want the children to take up smoking. Or they may go to church only because they believe churchgoing will improve the values of their children. Of course, what parents want to do is constrained also by their preferences, as influenced by their own childhood experiences. Rational parents maximize their utility, conditional not only on their resources, but also on their past experiences, and their attitudes toward their children. Sections 2 and 3 of this paper are organized around the issue of support of parents in their old age. Parents will accumulate assets to help provide for their old-age needs. Whether they also want their children to help support themdepends on their altruism toward children. I will show that the desire for support also interacts with whether parents invest the optimal amount of human capital in children. How can parents insure that their children will want to help them if they need help? One way is to try to influence the formation of children’s

Preference Formation within Families

The process of government

The Allocation of Goods Over the Life Cycle

This comment discusses the importance of politics in understanding cost-benefit analysis. Economists frequently rely on a social planner model, under which cost-benefit analysis has a straightforward role. However, a better model for understanding actual political choices of policies and programs is the interest group competition model. In this model, cost-benefit analysis can be used to explain why some regulations and other policies are adopted and others are not. Further, cost-benefit analysis may also be useful for undermining misleading claims of self-interested political pressure groups.

Gary S. Becker

Papers

Investment in Human Capital: Rates of Return

Preference Formation within Families

The process of government

The Allocation of Goods Over the Life Cycle

A Comment on the Conference on Cost-Benefit Analysis