IDLab Seminar: Measuring Human Capital Through the Lens of the Investment Cycle
On April 3, 2026, the International Laboratory of Intangible-driven Economy (IDLab) held a research seminar. Victor Krakovich, Associate Professor at the Department of Finance (HSE University St. Petersburg) and Research Fellow at IDLab, presented a report titled "Measuring Human Capital in Finance: A Literature Review and Emerging Directions."
The relevance of this research is driven by the fact that, although human capital is recognized as a key factor in company success, existing studies remain fragmented and utilize conflicting conceptual frameworks across various disciplines—labor economics, management, finance, and accounting. To overcome this fragmentation, an investment-cycle-based framework was developed, dividing the valuation into three key stages: ex-ante (preliminary), including signals such as education and skills; the investment stage, recording costs for personnel training and development; and the ex-post (final) stage, reflecting realized outcomes like wages, productivity, or corporate market value.
The empirical portion of the study drew on a dataset from Scopus, and Large Language Models (LLMs) were used to classify articles based on the specified levels of analysis and stages of the cycle. Victor Krakovich highlighted that AI is highly effective when working with predefined classification rules, successfully assigning research papers to disciplinary domains and investment stages. The analysis of 435 selected publications identified several research gaps: notably, in finance and accounting, individual-level human capital valuations are virtually non-existent, and the stage of actual investment in human development is much less studied than input indicators or final outcomes.
In the closing discussion, seminar participants addressed the potential for using sports economics as a kind of "laboratory" to refine talent valuation methods, which could later be integrated into corporate finance for a more precise measurement of the return on human capital.
