Acquiring Skills: Market Failures, their Symptoms and Policy Responses
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Reprint, 8/21/2008
EAN 9780521479578, ISBN10: 0521479576
Paperback, 376 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm
Language: English
Technological change, unemployment and industrial restructuring have highlighted training and the acquisition of skills as a policy issue. There is widespread concern that employees are insufficiently skilled, and it is recognised that this deficiency can have serious economic consequences. The situation is likely to become particularly urgent, as the dramatic increase in the share of temporary and part-time employment in the OECD leads to a decline in the incentives to train. This 1996 book, from the Centre for Economic Policy Research, provides a systematic account of the causes, consequences, and policy implications of failure in training provision and skills acquisition in the industrial world. It explains why the market mechanism leads people to under-invest in skills and examines the empirical outcome of these problems using a portfolio of examples for European countries.
List of figures
List of tables
Preface
List of contributors
1. Introduction
does the free market produce enough skills? Alison L. Booth and Dennis J. Snower
Part I. Market Failures
the Causes of Skills Gaps
2. Transferable training and poaching externalities Margaret Stevens
3. Credit constraints, investment externalities and growth Daron Acemoglu
4. Education and matching externalities Kenneth Burdett and Eric Smith
5. Dynamic competition for market share and the failure of the market for skilled labour David Ulph
6. The low-skill, bad-job trap Dennis J. Snower
Part II. Empirical Consequences of Skills Gaps
7. Changes in the relative demand for skills Stephen Machin
8. Skill shortages, productivity growth and wage inflation Jonathan Haskel and Christopher Martin
9. Workforce skills, product quality and economic performance Geoff Mason, Bart Van Ark, and Karin Wagner
10. Workforce skills and export competitiveness Nicholas Oulton
Part III. Government Failures and Policy Issues
11. Market failure and government failure in skills investment David Finegold
12. Training implications of regulation compliance and business cycles Alan Felstead and Francis Green
13. On apprenticeship qualifications and labour mobility Alison L. Booth and Stephen Satchell
14. Evaluating the assumptions that underlie training policy Ewart Keep and Ken Mayhew
15. Conclusions
government policy to promote the acquisition of skills Dennis J. Snower and Alison L. Booth
Index.