Revisiting the Complementarity between Educationand Training: The Role of Personality, Working Tasksand Firm Effects

This paper addresses the question to which extent the complementarity between educationand training can be attributed to differences in observable characteristics, i.e. to individual,job and firm specific characteristics. The novelty of this paper is to analyze previouslyunconsidered characteristics, in particular, personality traits and tasks performed at workwhich are taken into account in addition to the standard individual specific determinants.Results show that tasks performed at work are strong predictors of training participation whilepersonality traits are not. Once working tasks and other job related characteristics arecontrolled for, the skill gap in training participation drops considerably for off-the-job trainingand vanishes for on-the-job training....