Abstract
Apprenticeship systems are essentially based on the voluntary participation of firms that provide (and usually also finance) training positions, often incurring considerable net training costs. One potential, yet under-researched explanation for this behavior is that firms act in accordance with the norms and expectations they face with in the local labor market in which they operate. In this paper, we focus on the Swiss apprenticeship system and ask whether local norms towards the private, rather than the public, provision of training influence firms’ decisions to offer apprenticeship positions. In line with this hypothesis, we find that the training incidence is higher in communities characterized by a stronger norm towards the private provision of training, which we measure using local results from two national-level plebiscites that explicitly dealt with the role of the state in the context of the apprenticeship system. This finding turns out to be robust to a series of alternative specifications and robustness checks, as well as to an instrumental-variable strategy that tackles the issue of potential endogeneity of normative attitudes.
Highlights
February 2019 We thank Manuel Aepli, Uschi Backes-Gellner, Giuliano Bonoli, Jörg Markowitsch, Sandra McNally and Ludger Woessmann, as well as conference participants in Barcelona, Berlin, Bern, Leuven, London, and Washington for many helpful comments and suggestions
We use a unique combination of different data sources to estimate the impact of social norms towards the role of the state on the private provision of training – a topic of academic and of considerable public interest
In line with the vast, though mainly experimental, evidence on the effect of social norms on the private provision of public goods, we hypothesize that firms which are located in regions with a stronger norm towards the private provision of public goods are, ceteris-paribus, more likely to provide training positions; either because they have internalized the norm and/or because the norm is enforced in their community
Summary
“No matter how cleverly designed (...), incentives alone cannot provide the foundations of good governance.” Bowles (2016, p.2). Training incidence increases from the western to the eastern part of the country, and the lowest share of training firms is found in the French language region located in western Switzerland, but the regional variation is high even within the French and German language regions (this variation in the regional training incidence is documented empirically in section 5.1 below) This feature is very hard to explain referring only to arguments based on the costs and benefits of apprenticeship training because both the Swiss system of vocational education and training and the labor market in general are primarily regulated at the national level.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
