----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- I have some problems in dealing with this query, since I am not sure if I got it right. One thing is the economic value of the human lives (something with a long presence on the economic and non-economic literature). Another issue is the foreseeable value of education and training. And another one, still, is the shape of the personal income curve. I will concentrate on the last two issues. B. Kiker's work is certainly the most extensive one covering the subject, though it tends to adopt a justification perspective (a so-called whiggish approach, as it become fashionable to say it in our sub-field). His purpose of discovering the roots of human capital theory leads him to look at the previous reflection as logical antecedents of the modern developments. This has several problems as I attempted to discuss in the paper I presented at the last HES meeting (Vancouver). Two additional and useful references would be M. Blaug - The Economics of Education in English Classical Political Economy, in Essays on Adam Smith (A. Skinner and T. Wilson, 1975); and Margaret O'Donnell - The Educational Thought of the Classical Political Economists, University Press of America,1985. As far as the concave curve of the personal income is concerned, this was mostly accepted in the research on this issue of the early twentieth century. In particular after the pioneer work of several authors linked with the NBER. In this context, the setting of the Conference on Research and Income gave a great stimulus to the research on this topic. However, I would credit the idea of on-the-job training and its role on the shape of the personal income curve to Jacob Mincer and his doctoral dissertation (1957, Columbia; shortened version published the following year in the JPE). Pedro Teixeira University of Porto and University of Exeter ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]