We study how transition has affected human resource policies of a Russian heavy industry firm. Our data set contains personnel files of 1538 white-collar workers over 17 years: from 1984 to 2000. We find career paths before the first year of Gaidar's reforms, 1992, when Russian transition to a...

Although economic models of training decisions are framed in terms of a company's calculation of the costs and benefits of such training, empirical work has never been able to test this model directly on company behavior. This paper utilizes a unique database to analyze the determinants of the...

We study the allocation and productivity consequences of training production line supervisors in soft skills via a randomized controlled trial. Consistent with standard practice for training investments within firms, we asked middle managers -- who sit above supervisors in the hierarchy -- to...

The education reform movement includes efforts to raise teacher quality through stricter certification and licensing provisions. Most US states now require public school teachers to pass a standardized test such as the National Teacher Examination. Although any barrier to entry is likely to...

Youth unemployment is a problem in many developing countries, where labor market opportunities may be further squeezed by rapid rural migration into big cities, the cost of higher education and job seekers' limited information about the best opportunities. Policymakers and aid organizations...

This chapter considers means-tested employment and training programs in the United States. We focus in particular on large, means-tested federal programs, including the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), its successor the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), that program's recent replacement, the...

Grenada has faced various socioeconomic challenges within the last decade, including the destruction wrought by Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and the global financial crisis. As a result, economic indicators for Grenada illustrate unfavorable. Increases in the poverty and unemployment rates, especially...

Like many European countries, Bulgaria's workforce is facing dynamic developments influenced by negative demographic trends, seasonal and long-term migration of the population both in the country and abroad, imbalanced economic development of the Bulgarian regions, learning opportunities in the...

The Republic of Korea vaulted in less than three generations from being one of the poorest countries in the world to becoming a member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This economic transformation has attracted considerable admiration and inquiry. One of the...

This paper is an econometric analysis of the on-the-job training (OJT) decisions of a group of white American males during 1975. The data are obtained from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, which asked a very careful series of questions concerning the individual's OJT status. Each individual's...