Does Product Market Competition Decrease Employers' Training Investments? – Evidence from German Establishment Panel Data

Arbeitspapier

Using a large panel data set of German manufacturing establishments, this paper investigates the impact of competition on training incidence as well as on the number of trained workers. According to theory, one would expect a negative relationship between product market competition and firms' incentives to invest in employees' general skills (Gersbach and Schmutzler 2006). In our empirical analysis, product market competition is approximated by various measures of competition such as the Herfindahl Index, the number of firms at the 3-digit industry level and the price cost margin. After controlling for unobserved heterogeneity across industries and establishments, there is no significant effect of competition on training. This result is robust towards different samples, model specifications and estimation techniques.

Object Details

• ISBN: 978-3-86788-041-1
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Ruhr Economic Papers ; No. 41

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity ; Firm Organization and Market Structure ; Market Structure, Pricing, and Design: Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection ; Single Equation Models; Single Variables: Panel Data Models; Spatio-temporal Models
• Subject: Training ; human capital ; product market competition ; Betriebliche Bildungsarbeit ; Bildungsinvestition ; Wettbewerb ; Verarbeitendes Gewerbe ; Marktstruktur ; Deutschland

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Görlitz, Katja ; Stiebale, Joel
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (RWI)
• (where): Essen
• (when): 2008

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/26806
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET