IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/osloec/2002_035.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Wage Differentiation via Subsidised General Training

Author

Listed:
  • Bhaskar, V.

    (University of Essex)

  • Holden, Steinar

    (Dept. of Economics, University of Oslo)

Abstract

We provide a new explanation for why firms pay for general training in a competitive labor market. If firms are unable to tailor individual wages to ability, for informational or institutional reasons, they will pay for general training in order to attract better quality workers. The market provision of training may well exceed the first best level. Our explanation relies on wage compression within skill categories, while imperfect competition based explanations for firm subsidised general training rely on wage compression across skill categories.

Suggested Citation

  • Bhaskar, V. & Holden, Steinar, 2003. "Wage Differentiation via Subsidised General Training," Memorandum 35/2002, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:osloec:2002_035
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sv.uio.no/econ/english/research/unpublished-works/working-papers/pdf-files/2002/Memo-35-2002.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. George A. Akerlof & Janet L. Yellen, 1990. "The Fair Wage-Effort Hypothesis and Unemployment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(2), pages 255-283.
    3. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    4. Daron Acemoglu & Jorn-Steffen Pischke, 1999. "The Structure of Wages and Investment in General Training," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(3), pages 539-572, June.
    5. Freeman, Richard & Schettkat, Ronald, 2001. "Skill Compression, Wage Differentials, and Employment: Germany vs the US," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 53(3), pages 582-603, July.
    6. French, Stephen & Kubo, Katsuyuki & Marsden, David, 2001. "Does performance pay de-motivate, and does it matter?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 3637, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. David H. Autor, 2001. "Why Do Temporary Help Firms Provide Free General Skills Training?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(4), pages 1409-1448.
    8. Peter Cappelli, 2002. "Why Do Employers Pay For College?," NBER Working Papers 9225, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Malcomson, James M. & Maw, James W. & McCormick, Barry, 2003. "General training by firms, apprentice contracts, and public policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 197-227, April.
    10. Katz, Eliakim & Ziderman, Adrian, 1990. "Shared investment in general training : the role of information," Policy Research Working Paper Series 535, The World Bank.
    11. Axel Ockenfels & Gary E. Bolton, 2000. "ERC: A Theory of Equity, Reciprocity, and Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 166-193, March.
    12. Christian Dustmann & Uta Schönberg, 2009. "Training and Union Wages," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(2), pages 363-376, May.
    13. Anke S. Kessler & Christoph Lülfesmann, 2006. "The Theory of Human Capital Revisited: on the Interaction of General and Specific Investments," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(514), pages 903-923, October.
    14. Katz, Eliakim & Ziderman, Adrian, 1990. "Investment in General Training: The Role of Information and Labour Mobility," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(403), pages 1147-1158, December.
    15. Wiji Arulampalam & Alison L. Booth & Mark L. Bryan, 2004. "Training and the new minimum wage," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(494), pages 87-94, March.
    16. Giorgio Brunello, 2002. "Is Training more Frequent when Wage Compression is Higher? Evidence from 11 European Countries," CESifo Working Paper Series 637, CESifo.
    17. Arulampalam, Wiji & Booth, Alison L. & Bryan, Mark L., 2002. "Work-Related Training and the New National Minimum Wage in Britain," IZA Discussion Papers 595, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Blau, Francine D & Kahn, Lawrence M, 1996. "International Differences in Male Wage Inequality: Institutions versus Market Forces," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(4), pages 791-836, August.
    19. 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.
    20. Gregory, Robert G. & Borland, Jeff, 1999. "Recent developments in public sector labor markets," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 53, pages 3573-3630, Elsevier.
    21. Malcomson, James M, 1984. "Work Incentives, Hierarchy, and Internal Labor Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(3), pages 486-507, June.
    22. Bac, Mehmet, 2000. "On-the-Job Specific Training and Efficient Screening," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(4), pages 681-701, October.
    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. Giorgio Brunello & Maria De Paola, 2004. "Market Failures and the Under-Provision of Training," CESifo Working Paper Series 1286, CESifo.

    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. Boom, Anette, 2005. "Firms' investments in general training and the skilled labour market," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(6), pages 781-805, December.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Giorgio Brunello & Maria De Paola, 2004. "Market Failures and the Under-Provision of Training," CESifo Working Paper Series 1286, CESifo.
    5. Prasad, Suraj & Tran, Hien, 2013. "Work practices, incentives for skills, and training," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 66-76.
    6. Tina Hinz & Jens Mohrenweiser, 2019. "Competition, Institutions and Company-sponsored Training," Economics of Education Working Paper Series 0162, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    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. Dietz, Daniel & Zwick, Thomas, 2016. "The retention effect of training: Portability, visibility, and credibility," ZEW Discussion Papers 16-011, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    9. C. Simon Fan & Xiangdong Wei, 2010. "Training and worker effort: a signalling perspective," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(2), pages 604-621, May.
    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. Dan A. Black & Lars Skipper & Jeffrey A. Smith & Jeffrey Andrew Smith, 2023. "Firm Training," CESifo Working Paper Series 10268, CESifo.
    12. Mohrenweiser, Jens & Zwick, Thomas, 2009. "Why do firms train apprentices? The net cost puzzle reconsidered," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 631-637, December.
    13. Zwick, Thomas, 2007. "Apprenticeship training in Germany - investment or productivity driven?," Zeitschrift für ArbeitsmarktForschung - Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 40(2/3), pages 193-204.
    14. Caliendo, Marco & Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. & Pfeifer, Harald & Uhlendorff, Arne & Wehner, Caroline, 2024. "Managers’ risk preferences and firm training investments," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    15. Jörn-Steffen Pischke, 2004. "Labor Market Institutions, Wages and Investment," CEP Discussion Papers dp0652, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    16. Edwin Leuven, 2005. "The Economics of Private Sector Training: A Survey of the Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(1), pages 91-111, February.
    17. 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.
    18. Christian Dustmann & Uta Schönberg, 2009. "Training and Union Wages," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(2), pages 363-376, May.
    19. Stefan C. Wolter, 2008. "Ausbildungskosten und ‐nutzen und die betriebliche Nachfrage nach Lehrlingen," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 9(s1), pages 90-108, May.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    competitive labor market; general training;

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

    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:hhs:osloec:2002_035. 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: Mari Strønstad Øverås (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/souiono.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.