France and Germany are two polar cases in the European debate about rising youth unemployment. Similar to what can be observed in Southern European countries, a "lost generation" may arise in France. In stark contrast, youth unemployment has been on continuous decline in Germany for many years,...

It is well known that highly "female" fields of study in tertiary education are characterized by higher fertility. However, existing work does not disentangle the selection-causality nexus. We use variation in gender composition of fields of study implied by the recent expansion of tertiary...

Skill development is increasingly viewed as a way to escape the low education - high unemployment trap in developing countries. Consequently, policy makers in these countries are extensively investing in skill development programs. However, participation and completion rates in many of these...

This paper reviews the existing evidence on workplace training in Europe in different data sources--the CVTS, OECD data and the European Community Household Panel. We outline the differences in training incidence and relate these differences to the private costs and benefits of training, and to...

This paper is among the firsts to investigate the impact of overeducation and overskilling on workers' wages using a unique pan-European database covering twenty-eight countries for the year 2014, namely the CEDEFOP's European Skills and Jobs (ESJ) survey. Overall, the results suggest a wage...

This paper provides more insight into the relevance of the assumption of human capital theory that the productivity of job-related training is driven by the improvement of workers' skills. We analyse the extent to which training and informal learning on the job are related to employee skill...

The term skill mismatch is very broad and can relate to many forms of labour market friction, including vertical mismatch, skill gaps, skill shortages, field of study (horizontal) mismatch and skill obsolescence. In this paper we provide a clear overview of each concept and discuss the...

Using a representative sample of European firms, we study whether and to what extent financing constraints affect employers' decision to invest in employee training. We combine survey data on investment activities with administrative data on financial statements to develop an index of financing...