Abstract

The importance of employees' human capital, i.e. the sum of their skills and knowledge, for firms increases in response to technological change and intensified product market competition. Therefore, the development and implementation of lifelong learning at the firm level gain in importance. The idea of lifelong learning is that acquiring skills should encompass all periods over the life cycle and that it is no longer restricted to adolescents only. A promising tool to fulfill the requirements of lifelong learning is continuous training because it enables employees to upgrade their skills frequently.

Training is a flexible tool that can consider both firms' training needs (e.g. for the introduction of new technologies or products) and workers' ability and learning capacity. Furthermore, in Germany training costs are most often a shared investment between employers and employees which might also affect how training returns are shared. Therefore, it could be important to analyze training investments as a joint decision of firms and workers.

However, regarding the importance of training, little is known so far on how firms and workers interact when it comes to training decisions. The reason for this 'knowledge gap' is the sparse data linking training information of employers and employees. Within the project WeLL, a data set with the particular focus on continuous training is established that provides information on both employers and employees. Based on this data set, the following research topics will be addressed:

- Determining employer and employee characteristics that affect training investments

- Analysis how monetary and non-monetary costs and returns are shared between employers and employees

- Identification of the causal effect of training on wage development, employment probability and mobility decisions

- Providing evidence on individual, firm-specific and social returns and costs of training

The survey of employees represents as panel study conducted in 2007, 2008, 2009. This information is necessary to gain insights into the development of individual training investment in the course of time and differentiating short-run and medium-run training returns.