This study investigates the impact of finishing versus dropping out of college on self-esteem. Using data spanning three decades from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we find that dropping out of a four-year college significantly decreases self-esteem compared to graduating. In...

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, along with the skills needed to implement them. Both of these knowledge-based...

This paper examines whether high quality, curriculum-based training at the workplace makes firms more innovative. Our dependent variable innovativeness is operationalized with four different measures: general innovation, product innovation, process innovation and patent applications. As...

The New Institutional Economics made various contributions to the field of innovation management. Two specific areas of contribution are highlighted in this paper. The discussion of intellectual property protection starts with the classical concept of balancing the incentives to create new ideas...

Are initial competitive advantages self-reinforcing, so that markets exhibit an endogenous tendency to be dominated by only a few firms? Although this question is of great economic importance, no systematic empirical study has yet addressed it. Therefore, we examine experimentally whether firms...

Why do apprenticeship schemes work well in some countries, like Germany and Austria, but less so in others, like the UK? This paper argues that a necessary prerequisite for apprenticeship schemes to be successful is the enforceability of the apprenticeship contract, most notably the firm's...

This paper analyses the impact of replacing unskilled or semi-skilled employees by apprentices on establishment performance. We use representative matched employer–employee panel data and correct for different sources of estimation biases. We show that an increase of the proportion of...

This paper uses regional variation in labor markets, the industry structure and the educational system to explain the training decisions of firms. Using a representative firm-level data set, the results show that firms are less likely to offer training if the number of competing firms situated...

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 maximizing firms producing under a short run monopolistic...

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...