This paper argues that the German system of vocational training is undergoing subtle but significant changes from a mainly collectivist system to a more segmentalist one. To make the argument, the paper first discusses the two logics of collectivism and segmentalism, and how the German system is...

Skills and skill formation have become central topics in contemporary political economy. This essay traces a key concept in the current debate – the distinction between general and specific skills – back to its diverse origins in American postwar labor economics, comparative industrial...

This paper contributes to the literature considering the wage effects of educational mismatch in Germany. It uses a large German panel data set for the period from 1984 to 1997 and stresses the importance of controlling for unobserved heterogeneity when analyzing the labor market effects of...

Thurow's job-competition model implies that overeducation is contingent upon the differing skill endowments of employees. As yet, only rudimentary evidence has been furnished to confirm this relationship. In the present paper, we test the theory in a more sophisticated manner, by means of a more...

Entrepreneurship education has two purposes: To improve students' entrepreneurial skills and to provide impetus to those suited to entrepreneurship while discouraging the rest. While entrepreneurship education helps students to make a vocational decision its effects may conflict for those not...

This paper analyses the career progression of skilled and unskilled workers with a focus on how careers are affected by economic downturns and whether formal skills, acquired early on, can shield workers from the effect of recessions. Using detailed administrative data for Germany for numerous...