When: Wednesday, February 5, 2020, 1:30 PM - 2:30 PMWhere: Laws G.5, Mile End Campus
Gherardo Girardi, Principal Lecturer, School of Business and Society, University of St Mary; also Visiting Research Fellow, QMUL will present Competition for trained workers and wages during and after training on Wednesday 5 February from 1:30pm-2:30pm in Laws G.5.
Abstract: I show that a training firm may gain if it faces increased competition for the workers it trained, because the negative effect of higher wages after training is more than compensated by the positive effect of lower wages during training. The result can be lost if workers are sufficiently heterogeneous in their fixed cost of transferring from the unskilled sector to the skilled sector. Increased competition for trained workers always results in more workers being trained but may reduce training per worker. The market may overprovide training per worker. Multiple equilibria due to self-fulfilling expectations of non-training firms are possible. The paper considers the well-being of workers and the extent to which the market is able to achieve this.