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Human capital or human assets is a concept used by economists to designate personal attributes considered useful in the production process. It encompasses employee knowledge, skills, know-how, good health, and education. [1] Human capital has a substantial impact on individual earnings. [2]
Human capital in the form of education shares many characteristics with physical capital. Both require an investment to create and, once created, both have economic value . Physical capital earns a return because people are willing to pay to use a piece of physical capital in work as it allows them to produce more output.
In sociology, academic capital is the potential of an individual's education and other academic experience to be used to gain a place in society. Much like other forms of capital (social, economic, cultural), academic capital doesn't depend on one sole factor—the measured duration of schooling—but instead is made up of many different factors, including the individual's academic ...
In contrast, many economists today consider "human capital" (skills and education) as the fourth factor of production, with entrepreneurship as a form of human capital. Yet others refer to intellectual capital. More recently, many have begun to see "social capital" as a factor, as contributing to production of goods and services.
Capital formation is notoriously difficult to measure statistically, mainly because of the valuation problems involved in establishing what the value of capital assets is. When a fixed asset or inventory is bought, it may be reasonably clear what its market value is, namely the purchaser's price.
Capital goods are a major factor in the process of technical innovation: [13] All innovations—whether they involve the introduction of a new product or provide a cheaper way of producing an existing product—require that the capital goods sector shall produce a new product (machine or physical plant) according to certain specifications.
Gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) is a component of the expenditure on gross domestic product (GDP) that indicates how much of the new value added in an economy is invested rather than consumed. It measures the value of acquisitions of new or existing fixed assets by the business sector , governments , and "pure" households (excluding their ...
Educational capital refers to educational goods that are converted into commodities to be bought, sold, withheld, traded, consumed, and profited from in the educational system. Educational capital can be utilized to produce or reproduce inequality, and it can also serve as a leveling mechanism that fosters social justice and equal opportunity.