Human Capital Research in an Era of Big Data: Linking People with Firms, Cities and Regions

Human capital has been an important source of growth for cities and regions and a driver of differences in wage levels, with a large and growing body of literature exploring its sources, growth, migration, and implications. Increasingly, however, the questions are not what the returns to investment in human capital are and where those returns are maximized, but what factors are associated with decisions to invest in human capital. How does where we grow up, where we live, where we move to, and where we work matter? Although we are increasingly close to having the data to build a picture of those decisions, they bring with them a potentially larger number of theoretical and econometric issues. How do we meaningfully identify these relationships? Can we use big data as a means to shed light on what drives the accumulation of human capital? This chapter will provide some initial thoughts and insights into understanding our investment in human capital in the era of big data.