Since the crisis, Estonia has experienced one of the most pronounced declines in the ratio of non-residential investment to GDP in the OECD. In addition, investment in intangible capital has remained well below OECD standards, partly explaining the low innovative capacities of typical Estonian...

Using a cross-country firm level panel dataset from 1995 to 2015, this paper revisits the finance–productivity nexus by looking at the role of intangible assets. It argues that due to their specific characteristics, such as valuation uncertainty and lower pledgeability, financing the purchase...

With a newly constructed firm-level dataset combining various survey- and registry data from Statistics Estonia, this paper sheds new light on the labour productivity premium from adopting digital technologies and boosting digital skill use. The productivity premium is decomposed into a direct...

The creation of the Compte Personnel de Formation (CPF), an individualised financing scheme for professional training, marked an important step for the French professional training system. Implemented in 2015, it is the only example at the international level of an individual learning account in...

This review summarises existing studies evaluating the impact of apprenticeships on individuals and firms and provides a brief overview of relevant evaluations in three related policy areas: education; active labour market programmes; and private on-the-job training. Based on the reviewed...

The labour market in Russia is very flexible. Firms adjust to economic shocks through wage cuts, working hour reductions and minimisation of non-wage labour costs. Workers react by changing jobs. This results in a high and stable overall employment rate, but also high wage inequality,...

This study aims at disentangling the returns to formal, non-formal and informal training and fills key knowledge gaps. Informal learning is found to be by far the most common form of job-related learning at work. Learning informally at work is found to be associated with 3.5% higher wages, on...

The nature, content and milieu of work – i.e. the quality of the working environment – matter in many ways for people, firms and society as a whole. There is a great deal of evidence to show clear associations between job quality and the health of workers, their ability to successfully...

This paper uses panel regression techniques to assess the policy determinants of private sector innovative activity – proxied by R&D expenditure and the number of new patents – across 19 OECD countries. The relationship between innovation indicators and multifactor productivity (MFP) growth...