Learning and Work hybrid seminars, Autumn 2025

When: Tuesday, December 9
Time: 12.00 - 13.00
Where: TS53 - C-1.03

Speaker: Mantej Pardesi - ROA / Maastricht University

Titel: Career consequences of training in frontier firms

Abstract: We study the long-term effects of initial vocational training at a highly productive firm. Our data combines detailed employment biographies of around 100,000 apprentices with firm-level survey data in Germany. We investigate the effect of explicit measures of productivity rather than firm quality proxies such as firm size. We estimate marginal treatment effects that account for selection into training through observables and unobservables characteristics. We instrument an apprentice’s likelihood of getting into a frontier firm based on the predicted average productivity of the training firm of competitive peers, leveraging variations in the local labour market training demand that is exogenous to an apprentice’s training decision. Our findings show that firm productivity significantly contributes to post-apprenticeship wages and that positive returns vastly exceed those from training at a large firm. We show how our main effects depend upon latent ability, firm’s retention behaviour and standardization of training occupation. Our results have implications on the design of policies to increase apprenticeship training.

Scheduled seminars

The seminars for spring/summer 2026 will be announced here shortly. 

Previous seminars

September 2, 2025 Jan Möhlmann (CPB) - From Immediate Disruptions to Lasting Impacts: COVID-19 Infections and Their Effects on Labor Supply and Disability Insurance
September 16, 2025 Steffen Hillmert / Silvia Kopeczny (University of Tübingen) - Digital literacy and social inequality in education from an international perspective: a matter of equalisation or exacerbation?
September 30, 2025 Jan Stuhler (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) - Quasi-Random Matches: Evidence from Dual Labor Markets
October 14, 2025 Juan Pablo Rud (Royal Hollaway) - Labor supply, temperature, and green space in urban Mexico
October 20, 2025 Mark Boyes / Elizabeth Hill (Curtin University) Extraordinary seminar - Supporting mental health in the context of language and literacy difficulties
October 21, 2025 CANCELLED - Wieteke Conen (UvA) Understanding the quality and consequences of working multiple jobs
November 11, 2025 Jan-Paul Heisig (WZB / FU Berlin) - Regional unemployment at entry and early-career outcomes of young adults in Europe: How scarring effects depend on gender, education, and labor market institutions
November 25, 2025 Paula Protsch - BIBB / Univ. Cologne - Mitigating Ethnic Discrimination in Apprenticeship Hiring? The role of employer and teacher references in Norway