Capital humano; Recursos humanos; Formación del personal; Desarrollo económico;

Rosés, Joan R.

English

Research Papers in Economics

David Eltis, Frank D. Lewis, and Kenneth L. Sokoloff, eds., Human capital and institutions:
a long-run view (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. ix + 342. 25 ﬁgs.
45 tabs. ISBN 9780521769587 Hbk. £55/$85)
This book was initially intended as a collection of papers presented at a conference in
Rochester that had the objective of honouring Stanley Engerman. However, the premature
death of one of the organizers of that conference and co-author of one of the papers,
Sokoloff, converted the edited book into an homage to these two inﬂuential and innovative
economic US historians. The conference and book are devoted to reporting a variety of
BOOK REVIEWS 345
© Economic History Society 2010 Economic History Review, 64, 1 (2011)studies in the topics that Engerman explored during his academic career. The essays
number 12 in total, and are preceded by a brief introduction by the editors.
Part I is devoted to essays focused on health and living standards. Robert Fogel leads off
the ﬁrst section with a piece on the relation between biotechnology and life expectancy. He
provides a trenchant account of the contribution of technological innovation to human
health. Up to the Second World War, improved food access and sanitation measures
accounted for much of the life expectancy gains which were translated rapidly into GDP
advances. Since then, however, the improvements in medical care, accompanied by an
increase in health expenditures, have raised the age of death but at considerable cost and
with little effect on output. In the next chapter, Richard H. Steckel concludes that the
transition from hunter-gatherers to settled agriculture damaged human health. He sup-
ports this strong argument with the sparse skeletal evidence already available. In the last
chapter of this part, George Boyer explores how Britain created public and private
institutions in response to workers’ insecurity of income. He concludes that these institu-
tions had a beneﬁcial impact over overall productivity and workers’ welfare.
The second part is devoted to essays on the relation between institutions and schooling.
Engerman, Elisa Mariscal, and Sokoloff deal with the important question of why citizens
of countries in South and Central America were less educated than citizens of the US and
Canada. After considering an exhaustive list of possible causes, they conclude that it was
the extreme inequalities, both economic and political, that led to low investment in
education. In a complementary chapter, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz examine why
investment in education was comparatively so high in the US. They conclude that the
particular nature of educational ﬁnance in the US, decentralized and based on local taxes,
resulted in schools that were better connected with the necessities and requirements of the
local population. In the last chapter of this part, Michael Edelstein explores graduation
rates from engineering school in NewYork State over a period of 150 years.
The last two parts of the book contain a miscellany of chapters. In an innovative
contribution, David Galenson and Robert Jensen analyse the life-cycle value of artwork.
From their study of auction prices for paintings, they conclude that two types of artists
existed:conceptualartistswhocreatetheirimportantpaintingsatearlystagesoftheircareers
andexperimentalartistswhoproducepaintingsofincreasingimportanceandﬁnancialvalue
throughout their lifetime.This evidence imposes serious doubt upon the standard interpre-
tation of human capital depreciation. In the next paper, PeterTemin shows that Jews have
been over-represented among the richest 400 Americans and relates this phenomenon to
their network relations.Note that these results contradict others’ recent interpretations that
relates Jewish success to human capital accumulation. Robert Steinfeld studies the harsh
labour regulations allowing violence by bosses upon workers that were in force in England
up to 1875. He argues that these laws protected employers from workers’ opportunism,
particularly when workers were educated in their workplace. Finally, Hugh Rockoff dis-
cusses the importance and relevance of usury laws in comparative perspective.Not surpris-
ingly, he concludes that these laws could affect investment negatively.
As is common among volumes derived from a conference, the virtues of the genre are its
vices.Together, the essays of this book produce a mosaic picture of many of the preoccu-
pations of the US cliometricians: institutions, human capital, health, anthropometrics,
comparative history, labour conditions, and so on.With perhaps a couple of exceptions, I
found the essays informative,well crafted,and interesting.Several could also be used in the
readings lists for intermediate and advanced courses in economic history. However, the
organizers have not crafted a powerful and comprehensive volume to match the title of the
book. In the end, this is an odd combination of papers on human capital and a collection
of other papers that almost seem to have walked in from a different conference.
joan r. roses Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
346 BOOK REVIEWS
© Economic History Society 2010 Economic History Review, 64, 1 (2011)

Human capital and institutions : a long-run view [book review].

http://e-archivo.uc3m.es/bitstream/10016/11126/1/human_roses_EHR_2011.pdf

Human capital and institutions : a long-run view [book review].

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