Incorporated Men and Women

In my post on The Unincorporated Man “framing” writes:

Instead of saying that a corporation can own shares in your income, how about saying it is like a loan that you wont get into trouble ever paying back, but will have to pay more if you become rich.

Exactly. In fact, I have written about income-contingent loans before and how one of them got Bill Clinton through college. At the PSD blog Ryan Hahn also points to Lumni, a new firm that is investing in human capital in the developing world:

Lumni designs, markets and manages “Human capital funds”, an innovative investment vehicle for financing education. Students agree to pay a fixed percentage of their individual incomes for a predetermined number of months after graduation. The arrangement traspases part of the risk of investing in education from the student to the investor, who is in a better position to diversify it.

Lumni is the brainchild of economics professor Miguel Palacios.  Here is his book and Cato paper on human capital contracts.