Small average wage effects of employer and/or occupation changes 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 and occupation changers in...

This paper investigates the short-term costs and benefits of apprenticeship training in Germany. It calls into question the popular stylised fact that apprenticeship training always leads to net costs during the apprenticeship period. We analyse the impact of the proportion of different...

A number of studies have found that firms provide less training if they are located in regions with strong labor market competition. This finding is usually interpreted as evidence of a higher risk of poaching in these regions. Yet, there is no direct evidence that regional competition is...

This paper analyses the risk of unemployment, unemployment duration and the risk of long-term unemployment immediately after apprenticeship graduation. Unemployed apprenticeship graduates constitute a large share of unemployed youth in Germany but unemployment incidence within this group is...

Distinguishing carefully between mobility across firms and across occupations, this study provides causal estimates of the wage effects of mobility among graduates from apprenticeship in Germany. Our instrumental variables approach exploits variation in regional labor market characteristics....

The German dual apprenticeship system came under pressure in recent years because enterprises were not willing to offer a sufficient number of apprenticeship positions. A frequently made argument is that the gap could be closed if more firms would be willing to incur net costs during the...

In this paper, we analyze the role of personality traits for female labor force participation. While research on the role of cognitive skills for individual labor market success has a long tradition in economics, comparatively little is known about the channels through which non-cognitive skills...

Measuring unobserved individual ability is a core challenge of the analysis of questions related to human capital development. For that purpose, concepts from psychology, predominantly measures of IQ have become established means in empirical economics. However, many issues of individual di...

The availability of skilled labor has frequently been characterized as a key determinant of entrepreneurial activity in a region. Little is known, however, whether the composition of the regional skill base will have an effect on new firm creation. In regional economics, particularly the...

This paper contributes to the literature of academic entrepreneurship by investigating the effect of a possible depreciation of academic knowledge after leaving the university. The possibility of a person's human capital depreciation has up to now mainly been used to explain forgone earnings due...