Investing in Human Capital Incubation

Abstract

Using U.S. Census Bureau employee-employer matched data, we provide the first direct empirical evidence that firms’ intangible investments raise their employees’ portable human capital, designating these firms as “human capital incubators.” We introduce a model where workers’ preferences for skill development shape labor supply, giving incubators a labor-market advantage and an additional motive to invest in intangibles. Consistent with the model, incubation correlates positively with firm profitability, market power, and inflows of young workers. For top-tercile incubators, the present value of incubation is worth about 13% of firm value: roughly 43% of this value is internalized by incubating firms as wage savings, while 57% accrues as a spillover to workers and downstream employers. The aggregate externality across the whole distribution is worth 7% of total income. In a counterfactual equilibrium where workers cannot differentially price firms’ incubation capacity, diminished investment incentives lead to losses in aggregate income, intangible capital stock, and average worker skill.

Publication
Working Paper. Draft available upon request.

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