IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/glodps/488.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Employee Training and Firm Performance: Quasi-experimental evidence from the European Social Fund

Author

Listed:
  • Martins, Pedro S.

Abstract

As work changes, firm-provided training may become more relevant for good economic and social outcomes. However, so far there is little or no causal evidence about the effects of training on firms. This paper studies a large training grants programme in Portugal, contrasting successful firms that received the grants and unsuccessful firms that did not. Combining several rich data sets, we compare a large number of potential outcomes of these firms, while following them over long periods of time before and after the grant decision. Our difference-in-differences models estimate significant positive effects on take up (training hours and expenditure), with limited deadweight; and that such additional training led to increased sales, value added, employment, productivity, and exports. These effects tend to be of at least 5% and, in some cases, 10% or more.

Suggested Citation

  • Martins, Pedro S., 2020. "Employee Training and Firm Performance: Quasi-experimental evidence from the European Social Fund," GLO Discussion Paper Series 488, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:glodps:488
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/214815/1/GLO-DP-0488.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sascha O. Becker & Peter H. Egger & Maximilian von Ehrlich, 2013. "Absorptive Capacity and the Growth and Investment Effects of Regional Transfers: A Regression Discontinuity Design with Heterogeneous Treatment Effects," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 29-77, November.
    2. David Card & Jochen Kluve & Andrea Weber, 2009. "Active Labor Market Policy Evaluations: A Meta-analysis," CESifo Working Paper Series 2570, CESifo.
    3. Alan Barrett & Philip J. O'Connell, 2001. "Does Training Generally Work? The Returns to in-Company Training," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 54(3), pages 647-662, April.
    4. Nicholas Bloom & John Van Reenen, 2007. "Measuring and Explaining Management Practices Across Firms and Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 122(4), pages 1351-1408.
    5. David Card & Jochen Kluve & Andrea Weber, 2010. "Active Labour Market Policy Evaluations: A Meta-Analysis," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(548), pages 452-477, November.
    6. Pierre Cahuc & Francis Kramarz & Sandra Nevoux, 2018. "When Short-Time Work Works," Working papers 692, Banque de France.
    7. Michael Lechner & Conny Wunsch, 2009. "Are Training Programs More Effective When Unemployment Is High?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(4), pages 653-692, October.
    8. 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.
    9. Pedro Silva Martins, 2019. "The Microeconomic Impacts of Employee Representatives: Evidence from Membership Thresholds," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(4), pages 591-622, October.
    10. Pedro S. Martins, 2009. "Dismissals for Cause: The Difference That Just Eight Paragraphs Can Make," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(2), pages 257-279, April.
    11. Brunello, Giorgio & Comi, Simona Lorena & Sonedda, Daniela, 2012. "Training subsidies and the wage returns to continuing vocational training," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 361-372.
    12. Edwin Leuven & Hessel Oosterbeek, 2008. "An alternative approach to estimate the wage returns to private-sector training," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(4), pages 423-434.
    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. Martins, Pedro S., 2020. "What Do Employers' Associations Do?," IZA Discussion Papers 13705, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Brunello, Giorgio & Gereben, Áron & Weiss, Christoph T. & Wruuck, Patricia, 2020. "Financing Constraints and Employers' Investment in Training," IZA Discussion Papers 13067, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    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. repec:cep:cverdp:027 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Görlitz, Katja & Tamm, Marcus, 2015. "The Pecuniary and Non-pecuniary Returns to Voucher-financed Training," Ruhr Economic Papers 553, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    3. Anders Stenberg & Xavier Luna & Olle Westerlund, 2014. "Does Formal Education for Older Workers Increase Earnings? — Evidence Based on Rich Data and Long-term Follow-up," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 28(2), pages 163-189, June.
    4. 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.
    5. repec:zbw:rwirep:0553 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Katja Görlitz & Marcus Tamm, 2015. "The Pecuniary and Non-pecuniary Returns to Voucher-financed Training," Ruhr Economic Papers 0553, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universität Dortmund, Universität Duisburg-Essen.
    7. Görlitz, Katja & Tamm, Marcus, 2016. "The returns to voucher-financed training on wages, employment and job tasks," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 51-62.
    8. Dolores Messer & Guido Schwerdt & Ludger Woessmann & Stefan C. Wolter, 2013. "Labor Market Effects of Adult Education Vouchers: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment," Economics of Education Working Paper Series 0094, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    9. 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.
    10. Verónica Alaimo & Mariano Bosch & David S. Kaplan & Carmen Pagés & Laura Ripani, 2015. "Jobs for Growth," IDB Publications (Books), Inter-American Development Bank, number 90977, February.
    11. Jeff Borland, 2014. "Dealing with unemployment: What should be the role of labour market programs?," Evidence Base, Australia and New Zealand School of Government, vol. 2014(4), pages 1-21, December.
    12. Cain Polidano & Justin van de Ven & Sarah Voitchovsky, 2017. "The Power of Self-Interest: Effects of Education and Training Entitlements in Later-Life," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2017n12, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    13. Røed, Knut, 2012. "Active Unemployment Insurance," IZA Policy Papers 41, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Kelly, Elish & McGuinness, Seamus & O'Connell, Philip J., 2011. "What Can Active Labour Market Policies Do?," Papers EC1, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    15. Heinrich, Carolyn J. & Mueser, Peter R. & Troske, Kenneth & Jeon, Kyung-Seong & Kahvecioglu, Daver C., 2009. "New Estimates of Public Employment and Training Program Net Impacts: A Nonexperimental Evaluation of the Workforce Investment Act Program," IZA Discussion Papers 4569, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Forslund, Anders & Fredriksson, Peter & Vikström, Johan, 2011. "What active labor market policy works in a recession?," Research Papers in Economics 2011:9, Stockholm University, Department of Economics.
    17. Flesch, J. & Kuipers, J. & Mashiah-Yaakovi, A. & Schoenmakers, G. & Solan, E. & Vrieze, K., 2010. "Borel games with lower-semi-continuous payoffs," Research Memorandum 041, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).
    18. Ruhose, Jens & Thomsen, Stephan L. & Weilage, Insa, 2018. "The Wider Benefits of Adult Learning: Work-Related Training and Social Capital," IZA Discussion Papers 11854, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. 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.
    20. Gueorgui Kambourov & Iourii Manovskii & Miana Plesca, 2020. "Occupational mobility and the returns to training," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(1), pages 174-211, February.
    21. Dauth, Christine, 2016. "Do low-skilled employed workers benefit from further training subsidies?," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145533, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    22. repec:ilo:ilowps:457693 is not listed on IDEAS
    23. Ruud Gerards & Joan Muysken & Riccardo Welters, 2014. "Active Labour Market Policy by a Profit-Maximizing Firm," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 52(1), pages 136-157, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Training subsidies; Productivity; Counterfactual evaluation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • H43 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Project Evaluation; Social Discount Rate
    • M53 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Training

    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:zbw:glodps:488. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/glaboea.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.