Unwilling to train? Firm responses to the Colombian apprenticeship regulation

Serie

• Economics Working Papers Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Resumen

• 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 that take 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.

autores

• Caicedo, Santiago
• Espinosa, Miguel Andrés
• Seibold, Arthur

fecha de publicación

• 2020

Área temática

• E24 - Empleo; Desempleo; Salarios; Distribución intergeneracional de ingresos; Capital humano agregado; Productividad del trabajo agregada
• J21 - Mano de obra y empleo: dimensión y estructura
• J24 - Capital humano; Cualificación; Elección de ocupación; Productividad del trabajo
• M5 - Economía de la gestión de personal

Enfoque geográfico

• Colombia  Country
• South America  Continent

Volumen

• 1743