Work-Related Training and Wages: An Empirical Analysis for Male Workers in Switzerland

23 Pages Posted: 24 Apr 2004

See all articles by Michael Gerfin

Michael Gerfin

University of Bern; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Date Written: March 2004

Abstract

Work-related training is considered to be very important for providing the workforce with the necessary skills for maintaining and enhancing the competitiveness of the firms and the economy. On the individual level, the primary effect of training should be an increased productivity of the trained workers. This paper provides estimates of the effects of training on wages which can be seen as a lower bound for the effects on productivity. Based on panel data from the Swiss Labour Force Survey (SLFS) I estimate these effects using nonparametric matching methods. Training is measured either as firm-sponsored training or as any work-related training. The data show that multiple participation in work-related training is not a rare event. This complicates the analysis considerably because the evaluation of dynamic treatments is not yet fully developed. As a solution to this problem a heuristic difference-in-differences approach to estimate the incremental effect of further training events is used. The results indicate that it is important to account for multiple training events. Taken together, there are significant effects of work-related training on wages of roughly 2% for each training event. There is some evidence that workers who already have high earnings profit more from continuous work-related training.

Keywords: Training, Wages, Nonparametric Matching

JEL Classification: I2, J31, C14

Suggested Citation

Gerfin, Michael, Work-Related Training and Wages: An Empirical Analysis for Male Workers in Switzerland (March 2004). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=525923 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.525923

Michael Gerfin (Contact Author)

University of Bern ( email )

CH-3012 Bern
Switzerland
+41 31 631 4092 (Phone)

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

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