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Predicting Displaced Worker Industry Switching: Targeting Training Programs
Author(s) -
Stock Wendy A.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
growth and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.657
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1468-2257
pISSN - 0017-4815
DOI - 10.1111/1468-2257.00073
Subject(s) - displaced workers , displacement (psychology) , training (meteorology) , empirical evidence , labour economics , business , economics , economic growth , psychology , unemployment , meteorology , philosophy , physics , epistemology , psychotherapist
The high cost of providing formal training to displaced workers, combined with the lack of consistent evidence to support training program effectiveness, has prompted researchers and policy makers to suggest that formal training be offered only to select groups of displaced workers. This paper reviews theoretical and empirical outcomes suggesting that displaced workers who are likely to switch industries as a result of displacement are one group toward which formal training could be targeted. Given this motivation, the paper goes on to examine the empirical framework for such targeting. Estimates presented indicate that workers displaced from industries that employ only a small fraction of their local labor force are more likely to switch industries after displacement. In addition, the relative importance of workers' pre‐displacement industries in their local labor markets is a stronger predictor of industry switching than other commonly used measures of local labor market conditions.