The objective of this paper is to model and estimate the impact of labour training financed by the firm on labour demand in Belgium, introducing training potential productivity and cost effects. To model this influence, we assume profit maximizing firms producing under a short run monopolistic...

Entrepreneurs face higher commercialization costs than incumbents. We show that this implies that entrepreneurs will choose more risky projects than incumbents, aiming to reduce their high expected marginal commercialization cost. However, entrepreneurs may select too safe projects from a social...

We develop a theory of commercialization mode (entry or sale) of entrepreneurial inventions into oligopoly, and show that an invention of higher quality is more likely to be sold (or licensed) to an incumbent due to strategic product market effects on the sales price. Moreover, preemptive...

This study is based on data of a cohort of Swiss firms that were founded in 1996/97. In the year 2000 data were collected by means of a postal survey among those firms, which still existed by that time. In 2003 and 2006 two further surveys were conducted among the participants of the respective...

In this study we investigated the determinants (a) of the propensity of Swiss firms to train apprentices and (b) of the intensity of apprentice training as measured by the employment share of apprentices. Innovation, firm age and competition conditions on the product market are possible...

A large literature has studied the effect of displacement on labor market outcomes in general, but none has evaluated how the displaced manage as self-employed. This paper studies how the survival of the business is affected by displacement in connection to entry, using a discrete-time...

I exploit the amendment to the German Trade and Crafts Code in 2004 as a natural experiment to asses the causal effects of this reform on the probabilities of being self-employed and of transition into and out of self-employment using repeated cross sections (2002-2006) of German Microcensus...

The theoretical predictions of how employment protection affects firm productivity are ambiguous. In this paper I study the effect of employment protection rules on labor productivity using micro data on Swedish firms. A reform of the employment protection rules in 2001 made it possible for...

This paper analyzes how the costs of hiring skilled workers from the external labor market affect a firm's supply of training. Using administrative survey data with detailed information on hiring and training costs for Swiss firms, we find evidence for substantial and increasing marginal hiring...

Over the last decades, the United States and other developed countries have experienced profound job polarization whereby employment in high-skill and low-skill occupations increased at the expense of employment in middle-skill occupations. This paper examines the wage effects of job...