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Arthur Pigou, a British economist who is credited with coining the term “human capital”, believed there would be an under-supply of trained workers because companies would not want to teach skills to employees only to see them poached by rivals.
亞瑟·庇古(Arthur Pigou)，這位被譽為是首創了“人力資本”這一詞語的英國經濟學家相信，由于公司不想把技能傳授給員工，卻眼睜睜地看著他們被對手挖走，會存在受過培訓的工人的供給不足。
After the second world war, when America's GI bill helped millions complete high school and university, education started to receive more attention from economists, Becker among them.
二戰后，當美國的《退伍軍人法》(GI bill)幫助數百萬人修完了高中和大學時，教育開始受到經濟學家的更多的關注，貝克爾就是其中之一。
The son of parents who had never got beyond the eighth grade but who filled his childhood home with discussions about politics, he wanted to investigate the structure of society.
作為雖然從未讀過8年級以上卻讓他兒童時代的家中充滿了政治討論的父母的兒子，他想去研究社會結構。
Lectures by Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago, where Becker completed his graduate studies in 1955, showed him the analytical power of economic theory.
米爾頓·弗里德曼在貝克爾1955年讀完博士課程的芝加哥大學的講座給他展示了經濟理論的分析力量。
Doctoral degree in hand, Becker, then in his mid-20s, was hired by the National Bureau of Economic Research to work on a project calculating returns on schooling.
隨后，在25、6歲的時候，博士學位在手的貝克爾受雇于國民經濟調查局(National Bureau of Economic Research)，為一個計算教育回報的項目工作。
What seemed a simple question led him to realise that no one had yet fleshed out the concept of human capital.
一個看起來簡單的問題讓他認識到，至今還沒有人去充實人力資本概念。
In subsequent years he developed it into a full-fledged theory that could be applied to any number of questions and, soon enough, to issues previously seen as outside the realm of economics, from marriage to fertility.
在接下來的幾年間，他將其發展成一種可以被應用于許多問題并且不久又被應用于從婚姻到生育等一系列之前被視為是在經濟學領域之外的許多問題的成熟理論。
One of Becker's earliest contributions was to distinguish between specific and general human capital.
貝克爾最早的貢獻之一是區分了特定性人力資本和一般性人力資本。
Specific capital arises when workers acquire knowledge directly tied to their firms, such as how to use proprietary software.
特定性資本出現在工人獲取直接與其公司捆綁在一起的知識之時，如如何使用專屬軟件。
Companies are happy to pay for this kind of training because it is not transferable.
公司之所以樂于為這類培訓花錢是因為這類培訓不是可以轉移的。
By contrast, as Pigou suggested, firms are often reluctant to stump up for general human capital: teach employees to be good software programmers and they may well jump ship to whichever company pays them the most.
相比之下，正如庇古所指出的那樣，公司經常是不情愿為了一般性人力資本而掏腰包：把雇員培養成優秀程序員，他們就很可能跳槽付給他們最多的公司。
譯文來源考研英語時事閱讀
