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Occupational mobility and the returns to training
Author(s) -
Kambourov Gueorgui,
Manovskii Iourii,
Plesca Miana
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
canadian journal of economics/revue canadienne d'économique
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.773
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1540-5982
pISSN - 0008-4085
DOI - 10.1111/caje.12421
Subject(s) - human capital , government (linguistics) , training (meteorology) , labour economics , economics , capital (architecture) , selection (genetic algorithm) , demographic economics , business , psychology , economic growth , geography , archaeology , artificial intelligence , meteorology , computer science , linguistics , philosophy
The literature on the returns to training has pointed out that, immediately following a training episode, wages of participants in employer‐sponsored training increase substantially while wages of participants in government‐sponsored training hardly change. We argue that there is a potential selection issue—most of the government‐sponsored trainees are occupation switchers while most participants in employer‐sponsored training are occupation stayers. An occupational switch involves a substantial destruction of human capital, and once we account for the associated decline in wages, we find a large positive impact of both employer‐ and government‐sponsored training on workers’ human capital.