Continuous Training and Wages – An Empirical Analysis Using a Comparison-Group Approach

Using German linked employer-employee data, this paper investigates the impact of on-the-job training on wages. The applied estimation technique was first introduced by Leuven and Oosterbeek (2008). The idea is to compare wages of employees who intended to participate in training but did not do so because of a random event with wages of training participants. The estimated wage returns are statistically insignificant. Furthermore, the decision to participate in training is associated with sizeable selection effects. On average, participants have a wage advantage of more than 4% compared to non-participants