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Mobility and flexibility are increasingly demanded as structural change challenges established educational systems and traditional occupational demarcations. We use Lazear’s skill-weights approach (2003) first to operationalise the degree of specificity of skill combinations in an innovative manner and second to derive hypotheses about the effects of occupation-specific skill combinations. In our empirical section, we find that the more specific an occupation, the smaller is the probability of an occupational change, as expected. Furthermore, we are able to identify different clusters of occupations that are characterised by similar skill combinations within a given cluster and different skill combinations between clusters. We find that employees in very specific occupations have a comparatively higher probability of changing their occupation within than between skill clusters. Moreover, occupational mobility within a skill cluster is accompanied by wage gains, while mobility between skill clusters results in wage losses. Not surprisingly, the more specific the former occupation is, either the higher is the resulting wage loss or the smaller is the resulting wage gain depending on whether the move is between or within skill clusters, respectively. Therefore, the acquired skill combination rather than the occupation per se crucially determines the mobility of an employee.

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Individual returns on continuing vocational training have been in the focus of many empirical and theoretical papers. Most of the works do not explicitly discuss returns to training that is financed fully or partly by the employee. This seems surprising since several publicly funded programs to increase training participation aim at a stronger employee involvement in the financing of continuing vocational training. This paper analyses the participation in and the determinants and effects of employee-financed training using German panel data. The question is addressed, which employees invest and which benefit from training. Results show that employee-investment in training yields only moderate wage returns and has no significant impact on the further career development, especially when compared to the effects of enterprise-financed training. On the other hand, employees financing their own training gain in terms of unemployment risk reduction and the improvement in the matching of individual skills and job requirements.

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We empirically investigate the joint training decisions of workers and firms. The aim of our study is to learn how various cost components affect workers' (non-)participation in training. In particular, we separately consider monetary and non-monetary training costs, which is possible thanks to an especially rich dataset that includes both participants and non-participants. Our estimation results show that workers whose firms cover some of their training costs would generally be more likely to have assumed the full training costs themselves had they not received employer support. Moreover, the share of self-financed training, as compared to employer-supported training, is generally low. Thus, firms moderate virtually all training decisions and, as a result, considerably influence (non-)participation patterns. Interestingly, although training non-participation can be attributed to both monetary and non-monetary costs, the latter seem to comprise the more binding restriction. That is, time is more costly than money.

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The transition from school-to-work has been a burning issue in most countries for the last decades. So far research on this topic has not been conclusive, and it is still not clear whether transition problems are just individual, linked to the type of education followed at uppersecondary level, or just a prolongation of problems arising from poor school performance during compulsory education. This paper uses a unique Swiss longitudinal data-set, which includes information on PISA 2000 scores and the pathways chosen after completing compulsory school. Descriptive results show that students in vocational training, who obtained lower PISA results, are significantly more likely to be in an inadequate employment situation two years after finishing vocational training. Further analysis shows, however, that it is the type of vocational training followed at upper-secondary level that is decisive for the success in the transition. Nevertheless, individual PISA scores have an indirect impact on the transition results, as they are an important factor explaining which pupils are more likely to get into an intellectually demanding vocational training and which ones are not.

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Keeping up with rapid technological change necessitates constant innovation. Successful innovation depends on both incumbent workers' knowledge, based on experience and knowledge about the latest technologies, and the skills needed to implement them. Both of these knowledge-based elements of innovation can be attained through moderate labour force turnover in combination with continuous training. Based on German micro data, we find empirical evidence in support of training leading to innovation within a multivariate regression framework. However, when instrumenting training by the existence of a union's contract or a works council this impact disappears.

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[The authors] examine how different student employment statuses during tertiary education affect short-term and medium-term labor market returns. [The authors] focus on differences between students studying full-time and students studying and working part-time, that is, 'earning while learning'. In addition, [the authors] distinguish between student employment with and without relation to the study. Using a representative survey of Swiss graduates of tertiary education, [the authors] find significant positive labor market returns of 'earning while learning', but only for related student employment and not for unrelated student employment. The returns come in the form of lower unemployment risk, shorter job search duration, higher wage effects and greater responsibility. Therefore, student employment with a relation to the study is a complement to formal education and augments skills and knowledge.

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We examine the determinants of labour market status after the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) by use of unique linked register data on students, their parents, teachers, educational organisations and business companies in Finland. We distinguish between four outcomes: (1) employment; (2) further studies; (3) non-employment; and (4) drop-out. The explanatory factors are classified into the characteristics of three main groups: (1) educational organisations and their institutions; (2) students; and(3) local business conditions. Teaching expenditures do not matter but teachers’ skills do. Parental background plays a central role. Local business development matters for boys.

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The objective of this paper is to model and estimate the impact of labour training financed by the firm on labour demand in Belgium, introducing training potential productivity and cost effects. To model this influence, we assume profit maximising firms producing under a short run monopolistic competition regime. We emphasise that training variables, both qualitative and quantitative, can either increase labour demand through their positive effect on labour physical productivity net from the dropping price required to sell additional production, and that they can decrease labour demand through induced increasing of direct labour costs and wages. Generalised method of moments (GMM) estimations on a panel of 269 firms observed during the period 1998-2004 show non significant impacts of training variables on labour demand, the productivity and cost effects seeming to offset each other. These results allow us to suggest two scenarios in terms of firm and worker behaviour and that subsidiary training could favour employment under the two assumptions that firms don't transform training in an increased productivity/wage mark-up, but convert additional productivity in employment, and workers don't claim for higher wages as a result of additional productivity.

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Apprenticeship training in Germany is generally considered to be an investment of companies into the human capital of their apprentices. This view is mainly based on the German cost benefit studies which testify training firms high net costs for their apprenticeships, but these results have not been reconfirmed by other types of data or methods. We show that motivations for apprenticeship training are not homogeneous: some firms follow an investment strategy and others follow a substitution strategy. We derive an empirical method to identify different training strategies which can be used with publicly available company data. According to our classification, we find that in Germany 18.5 per cent of all companies follow a substitution strategy and 43.75 per cent to follow an investment strategy; the rest is mixed or undetermined. In a second step we estimate the determinants for a substitution strategy. We find sizeable differences between sectors with different skill requirements and between firms' coverage of industrial relations.

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In this study we investigated the determinants of the propensity of Swiss firms to train apprentices and of the intensity of apprentice training as measured by the employment share of apprentices. Innovation, firm age and competition conditions on the product market are possible determining factors that were especially emphasised in this investigation. In a further step, we analysed the impact of apprentice training on labour productivity when apprentice training is considered as an additional production factor in the framework of a production function. We found that the skill composition of the employment, innovation activities, firm age, labour costs, capital intensity, and competitive pressures all play a positive or negative role, even if not to the same extent, in determining the propensity and/or intensity of apprentice training. A further finding was that training propensity and/or training intensity correlate negatively with labour productivity.

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