Automation and artificial intelligence, with their skill-biased characteristic, were estimated to benefit high-skilled workers while displacing the low-skilled. Their uneven distribution of technological dividends and costs led to calls for policy interventions. This paper aims to answer: ‘What kind of government and business intervention can deliver needed skills to large parts of the population?’ in facing automation challenges to labor markets by investigating Switzerland’s vocational education and training (VET) policy. This paper identifies its policy eco-system and argues that, while historically – embedded particularities are hard to replicate, the Swiss case still inspires us with cross-country implications. These implications are underpinned by a solid stock of social capital, which enables behavioral internalization and anticipated reciprocity. Viewing social capital as constructive rather than endowed, this paper argues that building social capital is a viable and practical approach to VET policy learning. © 2023 The European Association for the Advancement of the Social Sciences.
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