Three contributions in applied microeconomics with a focus on vocational education and training

The first part of the dissertation examines the impact that the influx of cross-border workers has had on the willingness of companies in Switzerland to provide workplace training as part of dual-track VET programmes. The second part of the dissertation raises the question of why more companies in the German-speaking region of Switzerland take part in dual-track VET programmes than companies in the other linguistic regions of Switzerland. The third part of the dissertation examines the impact of ‘mismatches’ between learnt and practised occupations on individual wages.

This dissertation is divided into three separate chapters.

The first chapter looks at the impact that the influx of cross-border workers has had on the willingness of companies in Switzerland to provide workplace training. The working hypothesis here is that an expansion of the labour supply resulting from immigration tends to partially offset the need for learners, first of all because foreign workers can directly replace apprentices who have reached the stage of their apprenticeship in which they are working productively and secondly because foreign workers lower the recruitment costs of Swiss companies, thus reducing their incentive to invest in training young people.

Findings:

The analyses were facilitated by the fact that cross-border commuters mainly work in companies along national borders. This makes it possible to compare the workplace training activities of companies close to the border (which tend to employ cross-border commuters on a relatively frequent basis) with companies that rarely do so. Based on these analyses, the increase in cross-border commuters between 1995 and 2008 led to approximately 3,500 fewer apprenticeship positions; roughly two percent of total apprenticeship positions available in Switzerland.

The second chapter considers the question of why companies in the German-speaking region of Switzerland tend to be more heavily involved in the provision of workplace training than companies in the other linguistic regions of Switzerland. Specifically, the share of companies providing workplace training in the German-speaking region of Switzerland is roughly 30%, whereas in the other linguistic regions of Switzerland it is about four percentage points lower. This difference also is observed between companies that otherwise hardly differ at all as well as within bilingual cantons that share the same institutional framework. This dissertation examines the extent to which divergent attitudes (social norms) towards the distribution of tasks between public and private actors could explain why company involvement in workplace training differs across the Swiss linguistic divide.

Findings:

Voting outcomes show that people in the French, Italian and Romansh-speaking regions of Switzerland tend to regard the provision of services such as education, health insurance, maternity insurance and postal services to be a task of the state, whereas people in German-speaking region of Switzerland emphasise the commitment of private actors in the provision of these services. These different attitudes may explain why (private) commitment to workplace training in Switzerland differs to such a large extent between linguistic regions.

The final chapter leaves the apprenticeship market and looks at the regular labour market, asking the question: what impact has technological progress in recent years had on the Swiss labour market and on horizontal ‘mismatches’ within the labour force? A ‘mismatch’ is defined as a situation in which a person's learnt occupation differs from the person's actual occupation.

Findings:

Overall, the findings of various international studies confirm that there has also been a shift in Switzerland from more manual to more analytical and interactive activities over the last 15 years. Moreover, such mismatch situations occur relatively frequently and are usually not associated with lower wages. Nonetheless, mismatch situations can be problematic for people whose learnt occupations and skills consist mainly of manual and routine activities, which are now increasingly being replaced by new technologies. For such persons, income losses of a good ten percent become clear in the case of a ‘mismatch’

Dissertation supervisors:

• Prof. Dr. Michael Gerfin (University of Bern)
• Prof. Dr. Jürg Schweri (SFIVET)