A calculation of the social returns to innovation /Benjamin F. Jones and Lawrence H. Summers --Innovation and human capital policy /John Van Reenen --Immigration policy levers for US innovation and start-ups /Sari Pekkala Kerr and William R. Kerr --Scientific grant funding /Pierre Azoulay and Danielle Li --Tax policy for innovation /Bronwyn H. Hall --Taxation and innovation: what do we know? /Ufuk Akcigit and Stefanie Stantcheva --Government incentives for entrepreneurship /Josh Lerner.

This timely book evaluates international human capital policies, offering a comparative perspective on global efforts to generate new ideas and novel ways of thinking about human capital. Examining educational reforms, quality of education and links between education and socio-economic environments, chapters contrast Western experiences and perspectives with those of industrializing economies in Asia, focusing particularly on Korea and the USA.

Two leading economists debate the effectiveness ofhuman capital policies in addressing widening U.S inequality.

Human capital - the performance and the potential of people in an organization - has become an increasingly important issue. With a strong practitioner focus, this book provides business leaders and HR professionals with new insights into how to improve business performance through a strategic approach to human capital.

This paper considers alternative policies for promoting skill formation that are targetted to different stages of the life cycle. We demonstrate the importance of both cognitive and noncognitive skills that are formed early in the life cycle in accounting for racial, ethnic and family background gaps in schooling and other dimensions of socioeconomic success. Most of the gaps in college attendance and delay are determined by early family factors. Children from better families and with high ability earn higher returns to schooling. We find only a limited role for tuition policy or family income supplements in eliminating schooling and college attendance gaps. At most 8% of American youth are credit constrained in the traditional usage of that term. The evidence points to a high return to early interventions and a low return to remedial or compensatory interventions later in the life cycle. Skill and ability beget future skill and ability. At current levels of funding, traditional policies like tuition subsidies, improvements in school quality, job training and tax rebates are unlikely to be effective in closing gaps

The twentieth century was characterised by major advances in science and technology, and the pursuit of ambitious developmental goals strengthened the technocratic orientation of public administration. This study addresses technocratic factors in policy formulation and implementation by examining Indian and Dutch policies in primary education and primary health for establishing and sustaining human capital. While comparisons between India and the Netherlands may appear to be a mismatch due to substantial differences in levels of socio-economic development, similarities are nevertheless manifest. Both being deeply democratic and parliamentary, their systems of government are not far apart despite one being a decentralised unitary state and the other a quasi-federal state. Likewise, technocratisation in decision-making in both countries has been stimulated by changes in the past decade: the Netherlands is adjusting to membership in the European Union while India has adopted liberalised economic policies. This book provides opportunities for learning from experience as well as providing generalisations about patterns of change. Published in association with Indo-Dutch Programme on Alternatives in Development.