Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

The impact of training on productivity: evidence from a panel of Italian firms

The impact of training on productivity: evidence from a panel of Italian firms Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of training activity on labor productivity in a panel of Italian firms. Design/methodology/approach – The use of a large panel data of individual firms allows the author to properly account for the possible endogeneity of training activity and avoid aggregation biases typical in industry-level data. Findings – The paper finds that training has a positive and significant impact on productivity. While unobserved heterogeneity leads to overestimate the impact of training, failing to account for the endogeneity of training leads to underestimate its effects on productivity. Within occupational groups, training has large and significant effects for blue-collar workers, while the effects for executives and clerks are relatively small. Finally, using a measure of effective training intensity the paper finds that failing to account for training duration may lead to underestimate the effect of training on productivity. Originality/value – Our data set is unique in terms of size and coverage and overcomes several limitations of previous research using firm-level data. Moreover, besides estimating the overall effect of training on productivity, the paper allows to address some more specific questions. Does the effect of training depend on the type of worker being trained? What is the relevance of effective participation to training activity? http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png International Journal of Manpower Emerald Publishing

The impact of training on productivity: evidence from a panel of Italian firms

Colombo, Emilio; Stanca, Luca
International Journal of Manpower , Volume 35 (8): 19 – Oct 28, 2014
Download PDF
19 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/emerald-publishing/the-impact-of-training-on-productivity-evidence-from-a-panel-of-xpPHuvy9W2
Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
Copyright © Emerald Group Publishing Limited
ISSN
0143-7720
DOI
10.1108/IJM-08-2012-0121
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of training activity on labor productivity in a panel of Italian firms. Design/methodology/approach – The use of a large panel data of individual firms allows the author to properly account for the possible endogeneity of training activity and avoid aggregation biases typical in industry-level data. Findings – The paper finds that training has a positive and significant impact on productivity. While unobserved heterogeneity leads to overestimate the impact of training, failing to account for the endogeneity of training leads to underestimate its effects on productivity. Within occupational groups, training has large and significant effects for blue-collar workers, while the effects for executives and clerks are relatively small. Finally, using a measure of effective training intensity the paper finds that failing to account for training duration may lead to underestimate the effect of training on productivity. Originality/value – Our data set is unique in terms of size and coverage and overcomes several limitations of previous research using firm-level data. Moreover, besides estimating the overall effect of training on productivity, the paper allows to address some more specific questions. Does the effect of training depend on the type of worker being trained? What is the relevance of effective participation to training activity?

Journal

International Journal of Manpower – Emerald Publishing

Published: Oct 28, 2014

There are no references for this article.