The paper explores a structural asymmetry in macroeconomic accounting:
Capital accumulates and appears as a stock variable.
Human lifetime accumulates historically as well, yet it never qualifies as a macroeconomic stock and only enters models as a flow or demographic constraint.
The argument is that stock variables require two institutional properties:
(1) detachment from biological identity
(2) continuity across generations.
Capital satisfies both. Lifetime does not.
Curious how economists or system designers here think about this constraint.
Comments
HN note: the SSRN page is still being processed and temporarily shows the standard “under review” placeholder.
The working preprint version is available here:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18912296
The paper explores a structural asymmetry in macroeconomic accounting:
Capital accumulates and appears as a stock variable.
Human lifetime accumulates historically as well, yet it never qualifies as a macroeconomic stock and only enters models as a flow or demographic constraint.
The argument is that stock variables require two institutional properties: (1) detachment from biological identity (2) continuity across generations.
Capital satisfies both. Lifetime does not.
Curious how economists or system designers here think about this constraint.