Simone N. Tuor Sartore

Risk-return trade-offs to different educational paths: vocational, academic and mixed

This paper investigates the rates of return and the risks of different types of educational paths after compulsory education. We distinguish a purely academic educational path from a purely vocational path and a mixed path with loops through both systems. To study the labor market outcome we compare earnings and calculate net return rates as well as risk measures to investigate whether different educational paths are characterized by different risk-return trade-offs. We use Lazears jack-of-all-trades theory on entrepreneurship to derive testable predictions about the labour market outcome of different combinations of education for entrepreneurs and employees. Our empirical results are based on the Swiss Labor Force Survey (SLFS) and demonstrate that mixed educational paths are well rewarded in the labor market. However, a high return is also associated with a high income variance which is driven by those who end up as entrepreneurs.

What Behavioural Economics Teaches Personnel Economics

In this survey article, we review results from behavioural and experimental economics that have a potential application in the field of personnel economics. While personnel economics started out with a “clean” economic perspective on human resource management (HRM), recently it has broadened its perspective by increasingly taking into account the results from laboratory experiments. Besides having inspired theory-building, the integration of behavioural economics into personnel economics has gone hand in hand with a strengthening of empirical analyses (field experiments and survey data) complementing the findings from the laboratory. Concentrating on employee compensation as one particular field of application, we show that for personnel economics there is indeed much to be learnt from the recent developments in behavioural economics. Moreover, integrating behavioural economics into personnel economics bears the chance of eventually reconciling personnel economics and “classic” HRM analysis that has a long tradition of relying on social psychology as a classical point of reference.

Discriminatory Social Attitudes and Varying Gender Pay Gaps within Firms

This study analyzes the relationship between discriminatory social attitudes toward gender equality and firms’ pay-setting behavior by combining information about regional votes on constitutional amendments on equal rights for women and men with a large data set of multi-establishment firms and workers. The results show a strong relationship between discriminatory social attitudes toward gender equality and gender pay gaps within firms across regions. The results remain robust, even when the authors account for detailed worker and job characteristics and for regional sorting of firms. Overall, the results suggest that gender pay gaps are larger in regions where more people oppose gender equality rights. In other words, in the same firm women earn lower wages than their male coworkers in regions where more people have discriminatory social attitudes toward gender equality.

Part-Time Work and Employer-Provided Training: Boon to Women and Bane to Men?

Previous studies on employer-provided training have consistently shown a gap in training participation between part-time and full-time workers. This study examines whether the training disadvantage for part-time workers differs by gender. To capture the uncertainty in the firms training decision and to factor in heterogeneity among part-time workers, our analysis draws not only on human capital but also on statistical discrimination theory. Our empirical results indicate that gender plays a role in determining part-time/full-time training differences. Whereas for women working part-time or full-time makes only a minor difference, for men working part-time constitutes a serious disadvantage in access to employer-provided training. The results remain consistent among different subsamples.

Determinanten von beruflichen, akademischen und gemischten Bildungspfaden

Zur Erreichung eines tertiaren Bildungsabschlusses steht den Jugendlichen in der Schweiz eine Vielzahl an Bildungspfaden zur Auswahl. Ziel des vorliegenden Beitrages ist es zu analysieren, was die Wahl eines rein akademischen, eines rein beruflichen oder eines sogenannten gemischten, d.h. berufliche und akademische Ausbildungsinhalte umfassenden Bildungspfades determiniert. Den theoretischen Uberlegungen folgend vermuten wir, dass sowohl die elterliche Bildung, als auch regionale und zeitliche Faktoren eine wichtige Rolle spielen durften. Wir verwenden den Mikrozensus Aus- und Weiterbildung 2011, um unsere Hypothesen zu testen. Die empirischen Resultate zeigen, dass bei rein beruflichen und rein akademischen Bildungspfaden ein systematischer Zusammenhang mit der elterlichen Bildung besteht, aber nicht so bei gemischten Bildungspfaden. Allerdings zeigen die Resultate ebenfalls, dass die Haufigkeit gemischter Bildungspfade uber die Zeit zugenommen hat, was auf eine erhohte Durchlassigkeit des Bildungssystems in jungerer Zeit schliessen lasst.

Social Attitudes on Gender Equality and Firms' Discriminatory Pay-Setting

This study analyzes the relationship between discriminatory social attitudes and the variation of within-firm pay gaps by combining data on regional votes on gender equality laws with a data set of multi-establishments firms and their workers. The data set allows us for the first time to study gender pay gaps within the same firm across establishments located in regions with varying discriminatory social attitudes. Our results show that firms have larger pay gaps in regions with stronger discriminatory social attitudes. This result remains robust when we account for detailed worker and job characteristics and prevails for different subsamples. Thus we show that a relationship between discriminatory social attitudes and gender pay gaps prevails even after accounting for the sorting of women and men into different firms and occupations.

Educational Spillovers at the Firm Level: Who Benefits from Whom?

This paper examines spillover effects from education at the firm level, separating the effects for different levels and types of education and allowing for a curvilinear relationship. Modeling a Cobb-Douglas production function, we show that wages of tertiary-educated workers depend positively on the number of workers with an apprenticeship degree. These effects are the result of informational spillovers between differently educated workers. We estimate an aggregated Mincerian earnings equation using data from a large employer-employee survey and account for firm fixed effects as well as endogeneous workforce composition. Our results are highly significant and robust throughout our specifications and show that the number of workers with an apprenticeship degree has a positive impact on average wages of tertiary-educated workers but with a decreasing rate.

The Relative Importance of Type of Education and Subject Area: Empirical Evidence for Educational Decisions

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence for individual educational investment decisions and to investigate the relative importance of two factors, the type of education (vocational vs academic) and subject area (e.g. commercial or health), in determining variance in earnings. Design/methodology/approach Using a sample of 1,200 individuals based on the 2011 Swiss Adult Education Survey, Mincer-type earnings equations are estimated. The variance in earnings is decomposed with respect to the two factors mentioned above, which allows to quantify the relative contributions of type of education and subject area to variance in earnings. Findings The results of the variance decomposition show that subject area explains nearly twice the variance in earnings compared with that explained by type of education. Social implications As results show that earnings variance – and thereby risk – relate more to subject area than to type of education, this study suggests that for individuals caring about the risk of their educational decision the selection of a specific subject area is more relevant than the choice between vocational and academic tracks; in addition, educational policies as part of HRM policies should devote as much attention to the choice of subject areas as to vocational or academic education. This is especially important for companies or countries planning to introduce or to extend vocational education as part of their human resources strategies. Originality/value This study is the first to show whether earnings vary more by type of education or by subject area.

Reverse educational spillovers at the firm level

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine spillover effects across differently educated workers. For the first time, the authors consider “reverse” spillover effects, i.e. spillover effects from secondary-educated workers with dual vocational education and training (VET) to tertiary-educated workers with academic education. The authors argue that, due to structural differences in training methodology and content, secondary-educated workers with VET degrees have knowledge that tertiary academically educated workers do not have. Design/methodology/approach The authors use data from a large employer-employee data set: the Swiss Earnings Structure Survey. The authors estimate ordinary least squares and fixed effects panel-data models to identify such “reverse” spillover effects. Moreover, the authors consider the endogenous workforce composition. Findings The authors find that tertiary-educated workers have higher productivity when working together with secondary-educated workers with VET degrees. The instrumental variable estimations support this finding. The functional form of the reverse spillover effect is inverted-U-shaped. This means that at first the reverse spillover effect from an additional secondary-educated worker is positive but diminishing. Research limitations/implications The results imply that firms need to combine different types of workers because their different kinds of knowledge produce spillover effects and thereby lead to overall higher productivity. Originality/value The traditional view of spillover effects assumes that tertiary-educated workers create spillover effects toward secondary-educated workers. However, the authors show that workers who differ in their type of education (academic vs vocational) may also create reverse spillover effects.