Unwilling to Train?—Firm Responses to the Colombian Apprenticeship Regulation
研究哥伦比亚学徒制改革后企业的培训行为，发现高技能行业企业因培训成本高而回避学徒，低技能行业则积极寻求，并评估了扩大培训的整体收益与政策优化方案。
We study firm responses to a large‐scale change in apprenticeship regulation in Colombia. The reform requires firms to train, setting apprentice quotas that vary discontinuously in firm size. We document strong heterogeneity in responses across sectors, where firms in sectors with high skill requirements tend to avoid training apprentices, while firms in low‐skill sectors seek apprentices. Guided by these reduced‐form findings, we structurally estimate firms' training costs. Especially in high‐skill sectors, many firms face large training costs, limiting their willingness to train apprentices. Yet, we find substantial overall benefits of expanding apprenticeship training, in particular when the supply of trained workers increases in general equilibrium. Finally, we show that counterfactual policies taking into account heterogeneity across sectors can deliver similar benefits from training while inducing less distortions in the firm‐size distribution and in the allocation of resources across sectors.