Despite criticism, human capital theory (HCT) has remained central for six decades to the teaching and practice of economics. This paper reformulates the critique of HCT, focusing on two aspects that are typically relegated to the margin. The first of these is the pervasive presence of the external …
We review the recent economic literature on skill shortages and skill mismatch by paying particular attention to the demand side of skill mismatch, which have not received much attention in the relevant literature. We discuss measurement issues and how skill shortages and mismatch vary both with the…
This paper provides a systematic review of the growing literature on the poor match between employees’ field degree and the job requirements, also referred to as horizontal mismatch. We identify the different definitions used in the literature and find that each measure of horizontal mismatch yields…