Article 2005

Firms' investments in general training and the skilled labour market

Labour Economics
Journal · Vol. 12 · Issue 6 · pp. 781-805
Abstract

An adverse selection model is analysed, where firms can train or hire a skilled worker. In equilibrium, the market wage is determined by supply and demand. The quality of the supplied skilled labour is negatively biased, because workers stem from firms that shut down and from firms that observed their trainee's bad quality during the training. If fewer firms were to shut down, then the supplied average quality deteriorates and the incentive to train increases. The incentive is inefficient, because firms must share the informational rent and they free-ride. Ex ante workers may wish to increase the firms' bargaining power. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Author Keywords

Labour market General training Adverse selection Rational expectations equilibrium

Index Keywords

Author Affiliations
Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Funding & Acknowledgements
No funding information
References 10 References
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