This paper presents for the first time panel evidence on the productivity effects of training intensity and different training forms in Germany. It hereby takes account of selectivity of training activities, unobserved heterogeneity of establishments as well as omitted variable bias. Using the...

Die Bildungsreformen der sechziger Jahre sollten das Bildungsniveau der Westdeutschen anheben. Die Analyse der Daten des Mikrozensus weist darauf hin, dass die durch die Bildungsreformen intendierte Bildungsexpansion schon vor 1960 begonnen hat. Mit dem Conditional Mean Independence Ansatz...

This paper demonstrates that the share of apprentices exhibits a relatively strong seasonal pattern. This means that statistics on the share of apprentices such as those presented in official publications differ substantially from the actual yearly mean if they are measured on a date close to...

This paper investigates the evolution of wages and the recent tendency to rising wage inequality in Germany, based on the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) for 1984 to 2004. Between 1984 and 1994 the wage distribution was fairly stable. Wage inequality started to increase around 1994 in...

We analyse the determinants of dropout from secondary and vocational education in Germany using data from the Socio-Economic Panel from 2000 to 2007. In addition to the role of classical variables like family background and school achievements, we examine the effect of noncognitive skills. Both,...

In this study, we try to connect the economic literature on human capital formation with findings from neurobiology and psychology on early childhood development and self-regulation. Our basic framework for assessing the distribution of agespecific returns to investment in skills is an...

Wage and productivity effects of training are compared to study how the training rent is shared between employers and employees. With panel data from 1996-2002, I analyse the impact of continuing training on wages and productivity in a Cobb-Douglas production framework. Using system GMM...

A model is presented where workers of differing abilities and from different social backgrounds are assigned to jobs based on grades received at school. It is examined how this matching is affected if good grades are granted to some low ability students. Such grade inflation is shown to reduce...

This paper empirically analyzes the relationship between firm-provided IT training and the firm?s proportion of older workers. Using data from the ZEW ICT survey of the years 2004 and 2007, the results show that a firm?s IT intensity plays a crucial role: firms intensively using information...

This paper examines the wage effects of different types of career interruptions. We consider the timing and duration of non-employment spells by exploiting an administrative data set of German social security accounts (IAB employment sample) supplemented with information on the employees? entire...