This paper offers and tests a theory of training whereby workers do not pay for general training they receive. The crucial ingredient in our model is that the current employer has superior information about the worker's ability relative to other firms. This informational advantage gives the employer an ex post monopsony power over the worker which encourages the firm to provide training. We show that the model can lead to multiple equilibria. In one equilibrium quits are endogenously high, and as a result employers have limited monopsony power and are willing to supply only little training, while in another equilibrium quits are low and training high. We also derive predictions from our model not shared by other explanations of firm sponsored training. Using microdata from Germany, we show that the predictions of the specific human capital model are rejected, while our model receives support from the data.
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This paper examines the optimal level of training investment when trained workers are mobile, wage contracts are time-consistent, and training comprises both specific and general skills. The firm has ex post monopsonistic power that drives trained workers' wages below the social optimum. The emergence of a trade union bargaining at the firm-level can increase social welfare by counterbalancing the firm's ex post monopsonistic power in wage determination. Local union-firm wage bargaining ensures that the posttraining wage is set sufficiently high to deter at least some quits, so that the number of workers the firm trains is nearer the social optimum.
We investigate two dimensions of investment in general human capital on-the-job: the number of workers trained and the intensity of training for each worker. In the benchmark case, we consider wage and training decisions made by firms in an imperfectly competitive labour market. The benchmark case generates two types of market failure: too few workers are trained, and the workers who are hired receive too little training. This is caused by the firms' discount rate exceeding the social discount rate, due to a 'quitting externality'. We show that the presence of labour unions can increase social welfare by increasing training intensity, while reducing welfare by lowering the number of workers trained. Using the British Household Panel Survey, we confirm the predictions of the model.
This article investigates how human capital investment, labor turnover, and wages are jointly determined when the current employer knows more about a worker's productivity than potential employers. Results derived are quite different from, or unexplored by, the standard human capital theory. The authors show that the information asymmetry can cause an externality distortion in human capital investment because higher productivity due to the investment may not be recognized by the market. The investment level increases in the degree of firm specificity of human capital. The underinvestment problem is more severe when human capital is general than when it is firm-specific.
Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth indicate that the employer often pays the explicit costs of not only on-site training but also off-site general training. Although few of these costs appear to be passed on to workers in the form of a lower wage while in training, completed spells of general training paid for by previous employers have a larger wage effect than completed spells of general training paid for by the current employer. A model where contract enforcement considerations cause employers to share the costs and returns to purely general training can explain these findings.
How can today's workforce keep pace with an increasingly competitive global economy? As new technologies rapidly transform the workplace, employee requirements are changing and workers must adapt to different working conditions. This volume compares new evidence on the returns from worker training in the United States, Germany, France, Britain, Japan, Norway, and the Netherlands. The authors focus on Germany's widespread, formal apprenticeship programs; the U.S. system of learning-by-doing; Japan's low employee turnover and extensive company training; and Britain's government-led and school-based training schemes. The evidence shows that, overall, training in the workplace is more effective than training in schools. Moreover, even when U.S. firms spend as much on training as other countries do, their employees may still be less skilled than workers in Europe or Japan. Training and the Private Sector points to training programs in Germany, Japan, and other developed countries as models for creating a workforce in the United States that can compete more successfully in today's economy.
This paper seeks to provide new insight into how school and post school training investments are linked to employer workplace practices and outcomes using a unique nationally representative survey of establishments in the U.S., the Educational Quality of the Workforce National Employers Survey (EQW-NES). We go beyond simply measuring the incidence of formal or informal training to examine the determinants of the types employers invest in, the relationship between formal school and employer provided training, who is receiving training, the links between investments in physical and human capital, and the impact that human capital investments have on the productivity of establishments. We find that the smallest employers are much less likely to provide formal training programs than employers from larger establishments. Regardless of size, those employers who have adapted some of the practices associated with what have been called `high performance work systems' are more likely to have formal training programs. Employers who have made large investments in physical capital or who have hired workers with higher average education are also more likely to invest in formal training and to train a higher proportion of their workers, especially in the manufacturing sector. There are significant and positive effects on establishment productivity associated with investments in human capital. Those employers who hire better educated workers have appreciably higher productivity. The impact of employer provided training differs according to the nature, timing and location of the employer investments.
Two sources of inefficiency in the provision of on-the-job training are examined: an externality between firms which arises if there is imperfect competition between firms in the labor market, and allocation inefficiency due to asymmetry of information about the value of the trained worker. The second source of inefficiency may compound the first. Various contracts between the worker and the training firm are considered. Analysis of a simple example suggests that a contract in which the wage is chosen by the firm performs best, according to the criteria of reducing both types of inefficiency. Copyright 1994 by Royal Economic Society.
Since the Industrial Training Act of 1964, the UK government has adopted a variety of policies intended to redress a problem of under-investment in vocational training. In the 1960s and 1970s it attempted to regulate the training provided by firms, through a levy scheme. More recently, subsidised training schemes have been the centrepiece of policy. This paper examines the explanations for market failure in vocational training, and explores the rationale for such policies. Under-investment can arise from credit constraints and uncertainty facing trainees, and from imperfect competition in the labour market which creates external benefits for firms. Both subsidies and regulation can be effective in dealing with these problems, although it is argued that the training levy scheme, as implemented in the UK and other countries, should be viewed mainly as a mechanism for releasing credit constraints.
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