Human Capital

Articles in 'Human Capital'

The Vanishing Neighbor

Marc J. Dunkelman, The Vanishing Neighbor: the Transformation of American Community Why should an economic developer read a political sociology book? Because economic growth or decline is not simply the result of good and bad economics! Politics, cultural values, and changes in our personal lifestyles and relationships surprisingly can affect our success at the local and state levels. Despite its strange sounding name, the Vanishing Neighbor explores how economic changes generate societal changes with political consequences that make it difficult to develop effective solutions to address economic and social problems in our communities. What happens if societal change causes economic stagnation, inequality, and political gridlock? That’s what Dunkelman is trying to help us think through. Why does a vanishing neighbor change how we do our jobs?

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Quo Vadis–Whither Goest the "Margins of our Labor Force"???

Economic and workforce developers typically confront unemployment by providing basic or enhanced skills and repositioning the unemployed into “hot” occupations or growing industry sectors. Alan B. Krueger, Judd Cramer and David Cho, “Are the Long-Term Unemployed on the Margins of the Labor Market”, Brookings Papers, however, challenge this paradigm and wonder if the unemployed may be on the margins of the labor market–on the road to dropping out completely. Who is Alan Krueger–from 2011 to August 2013 he was President Obama’s White House Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. So what does Krueger have to say?

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Speaking as a Unit of Human Capital

This inequality debate is nothing but potential trouble for economic developers? An economic developer can potentially produce inequality no matter what he or she does. The first step in dealing with inequality is to understand what causes it. For one answer we turn to Brink Lindsey, Human Capitalism: How Economic Growth Has Made Us Smarter–And More Unequal. Lindsey presently with the Cato Institute was a former Senior Research Fellow at Kauffman. His argument turns knowledge-based economics, a popular economic development approach, on its head–suggesting it inadvertently plays a major role in causing inequality.

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