Hiring Refugees as Apprentices: The Role of Skills, Signals, and Policy Interventions

Do refugees face systematic disadvantages in the apprenticeship market and what measures can mitigate them? We address these questions using a combination of discrete choice experiments and information treatments involving 800 firms in Ger many. Our findings show that refugees are much less likely to be accepted for ap prenticeships than their native counterparts, unless they are substantially better qualified in terms of formal education. However, this gap can be significantly re duced through two key mechanisms: signaling soft skills such as discipline, moti vation, and reliability, and implementing public policy programs that enhance job specific language proficiency and job readiness.