Valuation of Human Capital: A Review of Studies on Quali-Quantitative Methods

Human capital is an important component of company assets as an intangible element linked to the future potential of the company itself and, therefore, capable of contributing to a considerable extent to the creation of its value. It is clear, therefore, that the evaluation of the economic capital of a company cannot disregard the estimate of its human capital, or rather the enhancement of the knowledge, skills and intrinsic attitudes of the personnel and the methods of organization and management of the same, from the specialized technicians for ward assistants and management. The paper aims to present an overview of the techniques and models through which the business-economic literature and professional practice has addressed the problem of measuring human capital. The originality of this work is to follow a path that provides a framework as exhaustive as possible of methods, models and sources to refer to in the qualitative-quantitative measurement of human capital. This objective seeks to respond mainly, even if not exclusively, to the needs of those who work in the process of estimating the economic value of capital. From the comparison of the latter it is clear that there is no optimal choice for estimating the economic value of capital, but it is a prevalent opinion in the literature that qualitative and quantitative models, rather than antinomies, must be complementary.