Labour market deregulation and apprenticeship training: A comparison of German and Swiss employers
研究了德国2003年劳动力市场改革后企业如何调整学徒培训策略以应对灵活性增加，并与未改革的瑞士对比，发现德国企业通过让学徒更多参与工作来降低培训净成本。
Many extensions of classical human capital theory regard labour market rigidities as a prerequisite for firms to invest in general training. From this perspective, the German labour market reforms since 2003 should have reduced their willingness to support the apprenticeship training system. This article demonstrates that, on the contrary, German firms did not abandon the training system but instead changed their training strategies after the implementation of the labour market reforms. We analyse the new training strategies that German firms deployed to cope with the increased labour market flexibility engendered by the labour market reforms. Switzerland, where no such reforms occurred, serves as the counterfactual. The results demonstrate that German firms successfully reduced the net costs of training by involving apprentices in more work and reducing non-productive tasks.