Human Capital: From a Substantive to a Representational Model

Résumé 0

In spite of its well-known theoretical weaknesses nowadays, the concept of human capital has become unavoidable as a category of the practice. The economic actors, managers or employees do make use of it spontaneously to depict their actions. We must take account of the practical success of the concept and try to give it new foundations. This calls for giving up the substantive conceptions of the human capital, be they Walrasian or Marxian, and consider it as a social construction. After a brief account of the critics of the substantive model we shall review the few tools provided by the economic theory to deal with representations: the Keynesian theory, the Marxian theory of ideology and the French Economics of Conventions. Classification JEL: B15, J24, B25