The RFBerlin Brown Bag Seminar is an informal lunchtime meet up where researchers and students present ongoing work and new ideas in a relaxed, discussion-oriented setting. Rooted in the tradition of bringing one’s own lunch in a paper-brown bag, it offers space for open exchange and constructive feedback.
Cäcilia vom Baur is Assistant Professor of Organizational Economics at Goethe University Frankfurt, in the Department of Microeconomics and Management. Her research lies in labour and organizational economics, with a particular focus on technological change and worker training. She is a member of the Economics of Education standing committee of the German Economic Association (Verein für Socialpolitik) and is a visiting scholar at the Yale School of Management in 2026..
Event Topic:
Firm Training Standards
joint with Katia Werkmeister (ifo & LMU)
Firms underinvest in general skills training because trained workers can be poached. We show that precise training standards, specifying concretely which skills firms must teach, mitigate this market failure. In a simple model, precise standards rule out cheap training, making every firm’s workers equally well trained. Hence, firms gain little from poaching, and training pays even for firms that could not otherwise retain their trainees. We study German apprenticeship standards, which have become substantially less precise over time. They are also less precise in occupations with more firm-specific skill needs and greater technological uncertainty, suggesting that regulators trade off the costs and benefits of precision. Exploiting quasi-random variation in precision that arises because regulators copy wording across occupations, we find that less precise standards reduce firms’ investment per trainee and erode training participation. Consistent with the poaching mechanism, the drop in participation is driven by firms exposed to poaching and occurs shortly after a standard is revised. Changes in trainee selection also play a role.
Event Details:
Participation in the seminar is limited to RFBerlin members and researchers from affiliated institutions. External researchers who are interested in attending are kindly asked to contact us under [email protected]
