tailieunhanh - The Impact of U.S. Firms’ Investments in Human Capital on Stock Prices

Practising investor relations will not automatically guarantee a company heightened profile, easy access to capital, liquidity in its shares or a fair share price. Naturally, other factors outside and in addition to a company’s own activities, such as the economic situation, a company’s fundamentals, confidence in its management team, the availability of shares and competition for investors’ money, can have an impact on how a company is perceived, funded, traded and valued by the market. Rather, the aim of embarking on an ongoing investor relations programme is that it enables the investment community to have greater awareness of the company’s investment. | The Impact of . Firms Investments in Human Capital on Stock Prices Laurie Bassi Bassi Investments Inc. Paul Harrison Federal Reserve Board of Governors Jens Ludwig Georgetown University Daniel McMurrer Bassi Investments Inc. June 2004 Thanks to the American Society for Training and Development for the use of their data. The views in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Reserve Board staff or system. This paper is a work in progress and as such is still preliminary and incomplete. Nothing in this paper should be interpreted as a recommendation to buy or sell securities. The past performance of portfolios discussed in the paper both actual and hypothetical researchbased portfolios is no guarantee of future results. Email addresses for the authors are as follows laurie@ ludwigj@ dan@. I. Introduction Economists have long pointed to investments in human capital - the productive capability that is embedded in people - as one of the most important determinants of economic growth. A large and growing body of literature has examined the returns to investments in human capital from both a societal and individual perspective. There is much less research available however on the impact of human capital investments from the perspective of shareholders and firms themselves which is the perspective considered in this paper. The current dearth of knowledge has a number of important implications. Most obvious is that investors have incomplete information regarding the returns on those investments that firms make in order to improve future performance. Although information on some forms of such investment - notably research and development and capital expenditures - is available the lack of information on firms investments in their people represents a conspicuous hole. In addition there are public policy implications. Currently firms human capital investments -most notably .