Three essays on human capital: Development and impact

Human capital;Leadership;MOOC

Tong, Tingting ; Economics Li, Haizheng Nair-Reichert, Usha McCarthy, Patrick Shemyakina, Olga Greiff, Samuel

University:Georgia Institute of Technology

Department:Economics

关键词: Human capital;    Leadership;    MOOC;   

Others  :  https://smartech.gatech.edu/bitstream/1853/55613/1/TONG-DISSERTATION-2016.pdf

美国|英语

来源: SMARTech Repository

【 摘 要 】

This dissertations investigates the development and impact of human capital, and it includes three essays. The first essay evaluates the impact of cognitive and noncognitive ability on leadership. We find that in additional to traditional measures of human capital such as education and experience, both cognitive and noncognitive ability have significant impact on leadership. Among different measures of ability, problem-solving and perseverance are the most important in affecting an individual’s potential leadership. Essay two evaluates factors affect the demand of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) in OECD countries and in China. We use search engine data provided by Google Trends and Baidu Index to proxy MOOC demand in each country from 2012 to 2015. The results show that in both OECD countries and in China, higher unemployment rate and internet speed increase MOOC demand. In addition, adult education levels positively affect MOOC demand in OECD, and wage has a positive impact on MOOC demand in China. Essay three investigates the impact of family and teacher human capital on student ability development in middle schools in China. The ability measures include both cognitive and noncognitive ability. We find that both family and teacher have significant impact on the development of student cognitive ability. With respects to noncognitive ability, family plays a more important role compared to teacher human capital.