IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iab/iabdpa/201922.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Informing employees in small and medium sized firms about training: results of a randomized field experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Berg, Gerard J. van den

    (University of Bristol)

  • Dauth, Christine

    (Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany)

  • Homrighausen, Pia

    (Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany)

  • Stephan, Gesine

    (Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany ; FAU)

Abstract

"We analyze a labor market program that subsidizes skill-upgrading occupational training for workers employed in small and medium sized enterprises. The program covers a substantial share of training costs. Nonetheless, take-up has been low. In an experimental setup, we mailed 10,000 brochures to potentially eligible workers, informing them about the importance of skill-upgrading occupational training in general and about the subsidy program in particular. Using combined survey and register data, we analyze the impact of receiving the brochure on workers' knowledge of the program, on take-up of subsidized and unsubsidized training, and on job characteristics. The survey data reveal that the brochure more than doubled workers' awareness of the program. We do not find effects on program take-up or short-run labor market outcomes in the register data. However, the information treatment positively affected participation in other (unsubsidized) training among employees under 45 years." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Suggested Citation

  • Berg, Gerard J. van den & Dauth, Christine & Homrighausen, Pia & Stephan, Gesine, 2019. "Informing employees in small and medium sized firms about training: results of a randomized field experiment," IAB-Discussion Paper 201922, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    • Handle: RePEc:iab:iabdpa:201922
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doku.iab.de/discussionpapers/2019/dp2219.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dauth, Christine, 2017. "Regional discontinuities and the effectiveness of further training subsidies for low-skilled employees," IAB-Discussion Paper 201707, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    2. Gerard J. van den Berg & Pia R. Pinger & Johannes Schoch, 2016. "Instrumental Variable Estimation of the Causal Effect of Hunger Early in Life on Health Later in Life," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(591), pages 465-506, March.
    3. Daron Acemoglu & Jörn-Steffen Pischke, 1998. "Why Do Firms Train? Theory and Evidence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(1), pages 79-119.
    4. Raj Chetty & Emmanuel Saez, 2013. "Teaching the Tax Code: Earnings Responses to an Experiment with EITC Recipients," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 1-31, January.
    5. Laura Abramovsky & Erich Battistin & Emla Fitzsimons & Alissa Goodman & Helen Simpson, 2011. "Providing Employers with Incentives to Train Low-SkilledWorkers: Evidence from the UK Employer Training Pilots," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(1), pages 153-193, January.
    6. van den Berg, Gerard J., 2007. "An Economic Analysis of Exclusion Restrictions for Instrumental Variable Estimation," IZA Discussion Papers 2585, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Peter Jacobebbinghaus & Stefan Seth, 2007. "European Data Watch: The German Integrated Employment Biographies Sample IEBS," Schmollers Jahrbuch : Journal of Applied Social Science Studies / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 127(2), pages 335-342.
    8. repec:iab:iabfda:201001(en is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Amy Finkelstein & Matthew J Notowidigdo, 2019. "Take-Up and Targeting: Experimental Evidence from SNAP," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(3), pages 1505-1556.
    10. Dorner, Matthias & Heining, Jörg & Jacobebbinghaus, Peter & Seth, Stefan, 2010. "Sample of Integrated Labour Market Biographies (SIAB) 1975-2008," FDZ Methodenreport 201009_en, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    11. Jeffrey B. Liebman & Erzo F. P. Luttmer, 2015. "Would People Behave Differently If They Better Understood Social Security? Evidence from a Field Experiment," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 275-299, February.
    12. 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.
    13. Görlitz, Katja & Tamm, Marcus, 2017. "Information, financial aid and training participation: Evidence from a randomized field experiment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 138-148.
    14. Bruno Crépon & Gerard J. van den Berg, 2016. "Active Labor Market Policies," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 8(1), pages 521-546, October.
    15. Christine Dauth & Ott Toomet, 2016. "On Government-Subsidized Training Programs for Older Workers," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 30(4), pages 371-392, December.
    16. Carolyn Heinrich & Peter Mueser & Kenneth Troske & Kyung-Seong Jeon & Daver Kahvecioglu, 2013. "Do Public Employment and Training Programs Work?," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 2(1), pages 1-23, December.
    17. Lisa M. Lynch & Sandra E. Black, 1998. "Beyond the Incidence of Employer-Provided Training," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 52(1), pages 64-81, October.
    18. Schwerdt, Guido & Messer, Dolores & Woessmann, Ludger & Wolter, Stefan C., 2012. "The impact of an adult education voucher program: Evidence from a randomized field experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(7-8), pages 569-583.
    19. Görlitz, Katja, 2010. "The effect of subsidizing continuous training investments -- Evidence from German establishment data," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 789-798, October.
    20. Fredrik Andersson & Harry J. Holzer & Julia I. Lane & David Rosenblum & Jeffrey Smith, 2013. "Does Federally-Funded Job Training Work? Nonexperimental Estimates of WIA Training Impacts Using Longitudinal Data on Workers and Firms," NBER Working Papers 19446, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Wooseok Ok & Peter Tergeist, 2003. "Improving Workers' Skills: Analytical Evidence and the Role of the Social Partners," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 10, OECD Publishing.
    22. 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.
    23. Abbring, Jaap H & van den Berg, Gerard J, 2005. "Social experiments and intrumental variables with duration outcomes," Working Paper Series 2005:11, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    24. Daron Acemoglu, 1997. "Training and Innovation in an Imperfect Labour Market," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 64(3), pages 445-464.
    25. Gerhard Krug & Gesine Stephan, 2016. "Private and Public Placement Services for Hard-to-Place Unemployed," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 69(2), pages 471-500, March.
    26. Matthias Dorner & Jörg Heining & Peter Jacobebbinghaus & Stefan Seth, 2010. "The Sample of Integrated Labour Market Biographies," Schmollers Jahrbuch : Journal of Applied Social Science Studies / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 130(4), pages 599-608.
    27. Asplund, Rita, 2004. "The Provision and Effects of Company Training. A brief review of the literature," Discussion Papers 907, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    28. Normann Müller & Friederike Behringer, 2012. "Subsidies and Levies as Policy Instruments to Encourage Employer-Provided Training," OECD Education Working Papers 80, OECD Publishing.
    29. Chang, Chun & Wang, Yijiang, 1996. "Human Capital Investment under Asymmetric Information: The Pigovian Conjecture Revisited," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 14(3), pages 505-519, July.
    30. repec:iab:iabfme:201009(en is not listed on IDEAS
    31. Dorner, Matthias & Heining, Jörg & Jacobebbinghaus, Peter & Seth, Stefan, 2010. "Sample of Integrated Labour Market Biographies (SIAB) 1975-2008," FDZ Datenreport. Documentation on Labour Market Data 201001_en, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    32. Benjamin Handel & Joshua Schwartzstein, 2018. "Frictions or Mental Gaps: What's Behind the Information We (Don't) Use and When Do We Care?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(1), pages 155-178, Winter.
    33. Hidalgo, Diana & Oosterbeek, Hessel & Webbink, Dinand, 2014. "The impact of training vouchers on low-skilled workers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 117-128.
    34. 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.
    35. Bassanini, Andrea & Booth, Alison L. & Brunello, Giorgio & De Paola, Maria & Leuven, Edwin, 2005. "Workplace Training in Europe," IZA Discussion Papers 1640, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    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. Teresa Backhaus, 2022. "Training in Late Careers - A Structural Approach," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2022_382, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    2. Homrighausen, Pia & Lang, Julia, 2019. "Do informational nudges alter firms’ hiring behavior of older workers?," VfS Annual Conference 2019 (Leipzig): 30 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Democracy and Market Economy 203481, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    3. Brunello, Giorgio & Wruuck, Patricia, 2020. "Employer provided training in Europe: Determinants and obstacles," EIB Working Papers 2020/03, European Investment Bank (EIB).
    4. Richard V. Wolff & Olaf Struck & Christopher Osiander & Monika Senghaas & Gesine Stephan, 2022. "Justice perceptions of occupational training subsidies: findings from a factorial survey," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 56(1), pages 1-18, 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. Gerard J. van den Berg & Christine Dauth & Pia Homrighausen & Gesine Stephan, 2023. "Informing employees in small and medium‐sized firms about training: Results of a randomized field experiment," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(1), pages 162-178, January.
    2. Dan A. Black & Lars Skipper & Jeffrey A. Smith & Jeffrey Andrew Smith, 2023. "Firm Training," CESifo Working Paper Series 10268, CESifo.
    3. Christine Dauth & Ott Toomet, 2016. "On Government-Subsidized Training Programs for Older Workers," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 30(4), pages 371-392, December.
    4. Dauth, Christine, 2017. "Regional discontinuities and the effectiveness of further training subsidies for low-skilled employees," IAB-Discussion Paper 201707, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    5. Balmaceda, Felipe, 2021. "A failure of the market for college education and on-the-job human capital," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    6. Rita Asplund, 2005. "The Provision and Effects of Company Training: A Brief Review of the Literature," Nordic Journal of Political Economy, Nordic Journal of Political Economy, vol. 31, pages 47-73.
    7. Giulio Pedrini, 2017. "Law and economics of training: a taxonomy of the main legal and institutional tools addressing suboptimal investments in human capital development," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 43(1), pages 83-105, February.
    8. Marco Caliendo & Deborah A. Cobb-Clark & Cosima Obst & Helke Seitz & Arne Uhlendorff, 2022. "Locus of Control and Investment in Training," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 57(4), pages 1311-1349.
    9. Francisca Bauer & Rudolf Hochholzer & Peter Huber, 2010. "Arbeitskräfteumschlag, Arbeitsmarktdichte und betriebliche Weiterbildung. Erste Ergebnisse anhand des Wiener Beschäftigungs- und Qualifizierungsmonitors," WIFO Working Papers 367, WIFO.
    10. Dauth, Christine & Lang, Julia, 2017. "Should the unemployed care for the elderly? : The effect of subsidized occupational and further training in elderly care," IAB-Discussion Paper 201713, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    11. Eric Schuss, 2021. "Beyond Windfall Gains: The Redistribution of Apprenticeship Costs and Vocational Education of Care Workers," Economics of Education Working Paper Series 0176, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW), revised May 2023.
    12. Görlitz Katja, 2010. "The Development of Employers’ Training Investments Over Time – A Decomposition Analysis Using German Establishment Data," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 230(2), pages 186-207, April.
    13. Belan, Pascal & Chéron, Arnaud, 2014. "Turbulence, training and unemployment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 16-29.
    14. Homrighausen, Pia & Lang, Julia, 2019. "Do informational nudges alter firms' hiring behavior of older workers?," IAB-Discussion Paper 201923, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    15. Christos Bilanakos & Colin P. Green & John S. Heywood & Nikolaos Theodoropoulos, 2017. "Do Dominant Firms Provide More Training?," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(1), pages 67-95, February.
    16. Homrighausen, Pia & Lang, Julia, 2019. "Do informational nudges alter firms’ hiring behavior of older workers?," VfS Annual Conference 2019 (Leipzig): 30 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Democracy and Market Economy 203481, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    17. Ruhose, Jens & Thomsen, Stephan L. & Weilage, Insa, 2019. "The benefits of adult learning: Work-related training, social capital, and earnings," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 166-186.
    18. repec:iab:iabfda:201109(de is not listed on IDEAS
    19. John S Heywood & Uwe Jirjahn & Annika Pfister, 2020. "Product market competition and employer provided training in Germany," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 29(2), pages 533-556.
    20. Pfeifer, Christian & Janssen, Simon & Yang, Philip & Backes-Gellner, Uschi, 2010. "Training Participation of an Aging Workforce in an Internal Labor Market," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-447, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    21. Andries de Grip & Wendy Smits, 2012. "What affects lifelong learning of scientists and engineers?," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 33(5), pages 583-597, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bundesrepublik Deutschland ; Weiterbildungsbeteiligung ; Auswirkungen ; Beschäftigungseffekte ; IAB-Betriebspanel ; Informationsangebot ; Projekt WeGebAU ; Integrierte Erwerbsbiografien ; Klein- und Mittelbetrieb ; ältere Arbeitnehmer ; Niedrigqualifizierte ; Subvention ; arbeitsmarktpolitische Maßnahme ; Weiterbildungsförderung ; 2014-2015;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J65 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant Closings

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:iab:iabdpa:201922. 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: IAB, Geschäftsbereich Wissenschaftliche Fachinformation und Bibliothek (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iabbbde.html .

    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.