The Skill-Weights Approach on Firm Specific Human Capital: Empirical Results for Germany

16 Pages Posted: 28 Apr 2005

See all articles by Uschi Backes-Gellner

Uschi Backes-Gellner

University of Zurich - Institute for Business Administration; Swiss Leading House

Johannes Mure

University of Zurich, Institute for Strategy and Business Economics, Swiss Leading House "Economics of Education, Firm Behaviour and Training Policies"

Date Written: 2004

Abstract

In a recent paper Lazear (2004) proposed the so called skill-weights view of firm-specific human capital. According to his theory all single skills are general but each firm may require a different combination of these single skills. The purpose of our paper is to test Lazear's model using a large and very detailed data set, the BIBB/IAB Qualification and Career Survey. The paper focuses on firms' investments in human capital, which according to the skill-weights approach should depend on the specificity of the firm's skill combination, on the breadth of the skill bundle, on the thickness of the external labor market and on the probability of separation. We estimate OLS regressions and poisson regression for count data. We find that all implications are borne out in the data.

Keywords: Skill-Weights Approach, Firm-Specific Training, Training in German Companies

JEL Classification: M5, M12, M53

Suggested Citation

Backes-Gellner, Uschi and Mure, Johannes, The Skill-Weights Approach on Firm Specific Human Capital: Empirical Results for Germany (2004). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=710441 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.710441

Uschi Backes-Gellner (Contact Author)

University of Zurich - Institute for Business Administration ( email )

Plattenstrasse 14
8032 Zurich
Switzerland
+41 44 6344281 (Phone)
+41 44 6344370 (Fax)

Swiss Leading House ( email )

Plattenstrasse 14
Zurich, 8032
Switzerland

Johannes Mure

University of Zurich, Institute for Strategy and Business Economics, Swiss Leading House "Economics of Education, Firm Behaviour and Training Policies" ( email )

Plattenstrasse 14
CH-8032 Zurich
Switzerland
+41 44 634 4276 (Phone)
+41 44 634 4370 (Fax)

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