IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/edecon/v13y2005i2p207-221.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The empirical determination of key skills from an economic perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Jasper Van Loo
  • Bert Toolsema

Abstract

Notwithstanding an impressive research tradition on key skills, no clear statistical criterion exists that is suitable to determine which skills may be considered key skills. This contribution proposes one possible methodology that can be used to identify key skills. Proposing an economic definition of the key skill concept and disentangling the direct and indirect effects of skills on productivity, we develop an empirical criterion for the identification of key skills. We apply this methodology to a dataset of employed vocational education graduates. We find that problem-solving skills, independence, oral presentation/speaking skills, accuracy/carefulness and initiative/creativity may be considered key skills.

Suggested Citation

  • Jasper Van Loo & Bert Toolsema, 2005. "The empirical determination of key skills from an economic perspective," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(2), pages 207-221.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:edecon:v:13:y:2005:i:2:p:207-221
    DOI: 10.1080/09645290500031421
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09645290500031421
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09645290500031421?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stevens, Margaret, 1994. "A Theoretical Model of On-the-Job Training with Imperfect Competition," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 46(4), pages 537-562, October.
    2. Gary S. Becker, 1962. "Investment in Human Capital: A Theoretical Analysis," NBER Chapters, in: Investment in Human Beings, pages 9-49, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Andy Dickerson & Francis Green, 2004. "The growth and valuation of computing and other generic skills," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 56(3), pages 371-406, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bruno Škrinjarić, 2022. "Competence-based approaches in organizational and individual context," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-12, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Loo Jasper B. van & Toolsema Bert, 2004. "The Empirical Determination of Key Skills from an Economic Perspective," ROA Research Memorandum 004, Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA).
    2. van Loo, J.B. & Toolsema, B., 2004. "The empirical determination of key skills from an economic perspective," ROA Research Memorandum 3E, Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA).
    3. Maria De Paola & Vincenzo Scoppa, 2002. "Firms' Training Decisions and Unemployment in Italian Labour Markets," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 61(1), pages 103-126, June.
    4. Aepli, Manuel & Kuhn, Andreas & Schweri, Jürg, 2021. "Culture, norms, and the provision of training by employers: Evidence from the Swiss language border," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    5. Chao Fu, 2011. "Training, Search and Wage Dispersion," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 14(4), pages 650-666, October.
    6. Andries de Grip & Inge Sieben, 2005. "The effects of human resource management on small firms' productivity and employees' wages," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(9), pages 1047-1054.
    7. Filipe Almeida-Santos & Karen Mumford, 2006. "Employee Training, Wage Dispersion and Equality in Britain," Discussion Papers 06/14, Department of Economics, University of York.
    8. Pedro S. Martins & Jonathan P. Thomas, 2023. "Employers’ associations, worker mobility, and training," Nova SBE Working Paper Series wp653, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics.
    9. Panos, Sousounis, 2009. "The Impact of Work-Related Training on Employee Earnings: Evidence from Great Britain," MPRA Paper 14262, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Rao, Neel, 2015. "General training in labor markets: Common value auctions with unobservable investment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 19-45.
    11. Holger Görg & Eric Strobl, 2006. "Do Government Subsidies Stimulate Training Expenditure? Microeconometric Evidence from Plant‐Level Data," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 72(4), pages 860-876, April.
    12. By Barbara Mueller & Jürg Schweri, 2015. "How specific is apprenticeship training? Evidence from inter-firm and occupational mobility after graduation," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 67(4), pages 1057-1077.
    13. Smits, W., 2007. "Industry-specific or generic skills? Conflicting interests of firms and workers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 653-663, June.
    14. Dan A. Black & Lars Skipper & Jeffrey A. Smith & Jeffrey Andrew Smith, 2023. "Firm Training," CESifo Working Paper Series 10268, CESifo.
    15. Miriam Rinawi & Uschi Backes-Gellner, 2020. "Firms’ method of pay and the retention of apprentices," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 72(1), pages 269-291.
    16. Ruud Gerards & Andries de Grip & Maaike Witlox, 2014. "'Employability-miles' and worker employability awareness," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(9), pages 952-965, March.
    17. Jung-Seung Yang, 2022. "Dynamics of Firm’s Investment in Education and Training: An Agent-based Approach," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 60(4), pages 1317-1351, December.
    18. Almeida, Rita & Carneiro, Pedro, 2009. "The return to firm investments in human capital," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 97-106, January.
    19. Cecilia ALBERT & Carlos GARCÍA-SERRANO & Virginia HERNANZ, 2010. "On-the-job training in Europe: Determinants and wage returns," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 149(3), pages 315-341, September.
    20. Giorgio Brunello & Maria De Paola, 2004. "Market Failures and the Under-Provision of Training," CESifo Working Paper Series 1286, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Skills; key skill criterion;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:edecon:v:13:y:2005:i:2:p:207-221. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CEDE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.