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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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There is a wide range of theoretical and empirical analyses suggesting that technological change has increased the demand for skills. Since training is a mechanism to upgrade workers' skills, it would be expected that technical progress strengthens the importance of training on account of the requirement for skills to complement new technology. However, the relationship between technical progress and firms' (employer-funded) continuous training has been little investigated. In our research we address the theoretical gap by building upon existing models from the skill-biased technological change and training literatures. This theoretical platform supports a maintained hypothesis of a positive relationship between training and technological change, which we investigate empirically for Germany using data from the Institute of Employment Research (IAB) establishment panel. Our empirical findings indicate that in Germany a greater share of workers undergo further/continuing training in establishments subject to technological change. An important issue we raise in our empirical analysis is the possibility of endogeneity/simultaneity between training and technological change.

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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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According to standard human capital theory, firm financed training cannot be explained if skills are of general nature. Nevertheless, investments of firms into general training can be observed and there has been a large literature to explain this puzzle, mostly referring to imperfect labour market issues. In German speaking countries firms invest heavily into apprenticeship training although it is assumed to be general. In our paper, we study the question to what extent apprenticeship training is general at all. Our paper for the first time studies how specificity of training may be defined based on Lazear's skill-weights approach. In our empirical part we use a unique German Qualification Survey, containing extensive information about the required skills at a workplace. We build occupation specific skill-weights and find that the more specific the skill portfolio in an occupation is in comparison to the general labour market, the higher are the net costs firms have to bear for apprenticeship training in the respective occupations. At the same time, the more specific the skill requirements are in an occupation, the smaller is the probability of an occupational change during an employee's entire career. Due to the new definition of occupational specificity, we thus find that apprenticeship training, formerly seen as general training, is very heterogeneous in its specificity.

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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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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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Previous research on educational decisions has almost exclusively focused on individual decisions to start a particular education. At the same time, the decision to revise an educational choice has hardly been analysed, unless it is the decision to drop out. However, dropping out is only one possibility of revising an educational choice. In this paper, we distinguish three different educational revisions, namely, dropping out, changing and upgrading. We analyse the determinants of these three different choices in apprenticeship training using hazard rate models for the empirical analysis. In a first research step, we carry out a simple hazard rate estimation of the decision to drop out versus staying in the educational system because dropping out is associated with considerable risks, unlike the other two choices. Our most important finding here is that dropout decisions seem to be driven to a considerable amount by financial considerations such as the opportunity cost of apprenticeship training or financial distress, determinants that could rarely be analysed in previous research due to lack of information. In a competing risks specification of the different educational choices, we find additional regional-level impact factors and remarkable differences in the determinants of the different choices. Less favorable local labor market conditions lead to lower hazards of staying within the educational system. These results underline the importance of distinguishing between the different choices instead of focusing exclusively on dropping out as one possible choice.

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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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This paper investigates the rates of return and the risks of different types of educational paths after compulsory education. We distinguish a purely academic educational path from a purely vocational path and a mixed path with loops through both systems. To study the labour market outcome we compare earnings and calculate net return rates as well as risk measures to investigate whether different educational paths are characterised by different risk-return trade-offs. We use Lazear’s jack-of-all-trades theory on entrepreneurship to derive testable predictions about the labour market outcome of different combinations of education for entrepreneurs and employees. Our empirical results are based on the Swiss Labor Force Survey (SLFS) and demonstrate that mixed educational paths are well rewarded in the labour market. However, a high return is also associated with a high income variance which is driven by those who end up as entrepreneurs.

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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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