This paper presents empirical evidence on premature terminations of apprenticeship contracts in Germany. Our novel approach uses human capital theory with a regional component as a clear-cut framework for the analysis. It derives testable hypotheses on individual decisions to finish an...

Lebenslanges Lernen allgemein und betriebliche Weiterbildung im Besonderen sind in den letzten Jahren aufgrund der sich wandelnden Arbeitsanforderungen zweifelsohne immer wichtiger geworden. Gleichzeitig hat jedoch die Beteiligung an Weiterbildung eher abgenommen. Während 2000 noch 43% aller...

In the theoretical literature on why companies train apprentices three different approaches are usually distinguished: the investment, the substitution and the reputation motive. The aim of our paper is to empirically identify whether a company follows one or the other motive or even more than...

This paper studies willingness to become an entrepreneur depending on an individual’s composition of human and social capital. Our theoretical analysis is an extension of Lazear’s (2005) jack-of-all-trades theory. Our primary implication is that it is not individuals with a higher level of...

Drawing on an unusually large set of employer-employee data, we examine how workers’ pay is related to the educational composition within their occupational group. We find that educational composition as measured by the educational diversity and the educational level of an occupational group...

Although trainee pay is central to the economics of work-based training, institutionalists have paid it little attention, while economists typically assume that it is set by market clearing. We document large differences in the pay of metalworking apprentices in three countries: relative to the...

We use a long panel data set for four cohorts of male blue-collar workers entering into an internal labor market to analyze the effect of age on the probability of participating in different employer-financed training measures. We find that training participation probabilities are inverted...

Using representative data containing information on job satisfaction and worker’s gender-specific prejudices, we investigate the relationship between stereotyping and job satisfaction. We show that women in stereotypically male jobs are significantly less satisfied with their work climate and...

Relatively small average wage effects of employer and occupation changes after apprenticeship training mask large differences between occupation groups and apprentices with different schooling backgrounds. Employer and occupation changers in industrial occupations enjoy large wage advantages,...

A series of seminal theoretical papers argues that poaching of employees may hamper company-sponsored general training. However, the extent of poaching, its determinants and consequences, remains an open empirical question. We provide a novel empirical identification strategy for poaching and...