Abstract

Human capital has become a popular concept in modern economics since the 1960s, though its historiography is still limited. Prior studies focussed on rational reconstructions, using earlier references to provide legitimacy to modern developments. In this text we take a different approach by tracing the evolution of the term and the (dis)continuities in its use. We analyse various contexts in which education and human capital were discussed during the first half of the twentieth century. The analysis underlines the complex stabilisation of the concept human capital, the loose connections among earlier debates and between those debates and modern economics.

摘要

自1960年代以来，人力资本已成为现代经济学中的一种流行概念，尽管其历史学仍然有限。先前的研究集中于合理的重建，使用较早的参考文献为现代发展提供了合法性。在本文中，我们通过追踪术语的演变和使用中的（不连续）连续性来采取不同的方法。我们分析了在二十世纪上半叶讨论教育和人力资本的各种情况。分析强调了人力资本概念的复杂稳定，早期辩论之间以及这些辩论与现代经济学之间的松散联系。