Dieser Aufsatz fasst Resultate aus einem einzigartigen Experiment mit Weiterbildungsgutscheinen zusammen. Im Jahr 2006 wurden 2'400 Personen ein Weiterbildungsgutschein zugestellt, der sie zur Bezahlung einer frei gewählten Weiterbildung berechtigte. Das Nutzungsverhalten kann mit einer...

Empirical research has given cause to fear that the demographic ageing in industrialized countries is likely to exert a negative impact on educational spending. These papers have linked the share of the elderly with the per capita or per pupil spending on education at the local, state-wide or...

Demographic change in industrial countries will influence educational spending in potentially two ways. On the one hand, the decline in the number of school-age children should alleviate the financial pressure. On the other hand, the theoretical/empirical literature has established that the...

Diese Untersuchung prüft anhand von Befragungsdaten die Einstellung der Schweizer Wahlbevölkerung zu verschiedenen Formen freier Schulwahl. Die Befunde zeigen, dass eine Finanzierung der privaten Schulen mit öffentlichen Geldern klar abgelehnt wird, während eine freie Schulwahl zwischen...

Lifelong learning is often promoted in ageing societies, but little is known about its returns or governmentsÕ ability to advance it. This paper evaluates the effects of a large-scale randomized field experiment issuing vouchers for adult education in Switzerland. We find no significant average...

This paper for the first time jointly analyses the consequences of adverse selection, signalling and indices on entry wages of skilled employees. It uses German linked employer employee panel data (LIAB) and introduces a measure for relative productivity of skilled job applicants based on...

Small average wage effects of employer and/or occupation changes after apprenticeship training mask large differences between occupation groups and apprentices with different schooling back-grounds. Apprentices in commerce and trading occupations strongly profit from an employer change. Employer...

Research on determining what it is about schooling that the labor market rewards is scarce. This paper shows that when speci…cally controlling for schooling cognitive skills (i.e. the capacity to process information and apply knowledge) and not cognitive skills as a whole, a considerable share...

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...

Central exams have been discussed as an incentive to improve educational outcomes. In our paper we study the impact of central exams on labor market outcomes. We explain the quality choice of schools under central and non-central exams and model the resulting students’ schooling decisions and...