Valuation of labour market entrance positions among (future) apprentices - Results from two discrete choice experiments

Abstract

In this paper, we estimate the relative value of different employment characteristics when choosing between apprenticeship and job offers. Further, we test assumptions derived from sociological rational choice theory on preference heterogeneity by individual and context characteristics. For this purpose, we analyse data from two discrete choice experiments, one focusing on the choice of an apprenticeship position and the other on the choice of first employment position after vocational training. The experiments were conducted as part of the DAB panel study on educational and occupational trajectories of adolescents in German-speaking Switzerland on students respectively one year prior to leaving compulsory school, and during vocational training. Our findings show that the most relevant aspect when choosing a labour market entrance position is, that the job should match the desired occupational specialisation. Furthermore, considerable preference heterogeneity is found, which can partly be accounted for by individual- and labour market-specific subjective utility. © 2019 The Authors

Keywords

Author Keywords

Vocational training Labour market entry School-to-work transition Choice experiment Job choice

Index Keywords

Author Affiliations

Department of Sociology of Education, University of Bern, Bern, BE, Switzerland

Funding & Acknowledgements

Singapore Eye Research Institute, SERI

The DAB panel study is financed substantially by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) in Switzerland. The interpretations and conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of SERI. The authors wish to thank the editors of the special issue and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on previous versions of this paper and Julian Sagebiel for providing his user-written Stata command, poetest.

Staatssekretariat fÃ¼r Bildung, Forschung und Innovation, SBFI

The DAB panel study is financed substantially by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) in Switzerland. The interpretations and conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of SERI. The authors wish to thank the editors of the special issue and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on previous versions of this paper and Julian Sagebiel for providing his user-written Stata command, poetest.

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Valuation of labour market entrance positions among (future) apprentices - Results from two discrete choice experiments

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