Acquiring Skills: Market Failures, their Symptoms and Policy Responses

by Alison L. Booth (Editor), Dennis J. Snower (Editor)

Overview

In recent years, technological change, unemployment and industrial restructuring have highlighted training and the acquisition of skills as a policy issue. Throughout the industrialized world there is widespread concern that employees are insufficiently skilled. This deficiency can have serious economic consequences, reflected in excessive unemployment, meager growth, impeded competitiveness, excessive wages, insufficient innovation, and deficient product quality. This volume, from the Centre for Economic Policy Research, provides a systematic account of all the major market failures in the area of skills acquisition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521472050
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/18/1996
Pages:	374
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.29(h) x 1.02(d)

About the Author

Alison Booth is the author of seven novels and has also contributed short stories to international collections including Antipodes and New Writing. Her novels have been published by Penguin Random House and by RedDoor. Her awards include a Varuna Longlines Fellowship from the Eleanor Dark Foundation, the Highly Commended Award in the 2011 ACT Book of the Year Award, and the Highly Commended Award in the 2020 ACT Notables Award. An academic with a PhD from the London School of Economics, Alison is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and recipient of the ESA Distinguished Fellow Award.

Table of Contents

List of figures; List of tables; Preface; List of contributors; 1. Introduction: does the free market produce enough skills? Alison L. Booth and Dennis J. Snower; Part I. Market Failures: the Causes of Skills Gaps: 2. Transferable training and poaching externalities Margaret Stevens; 3. Credit constraints, investment externalities and growth Daron Acemoglu; 4. Education and matching externalities Kenneth Burdett and Eric Smith; 5. Dynamic competition for market share and the failure of the market for skilled labour David Ulph; 6. The low-skill, bad-job trap Dennis J. Snower; Part II. Empirical Consequences of Skills Gaps: 7. Changes in the relative demand for skills Stephen Machin; 8. Skill shortages, productivity growth and wage inflation Jonathan Haskel and Christopher Martin; 9. Workforce skills, product quality and economic performance Geoff Mason, Bart Van Ark, and Karin Wagner; 10. Workforce skills and export competitiveness Nicholas Oulton; Part III. Government Failures and Policy Issues: 11. Market failure and government failure in skills investment David Finegold; 12. Training implications of regulation compliance and business cycles Alan Felstead and Francis Green; 13. On apprenticeship qualifications and labour mobility Alison L. Booth and Stephen Satchell; 14. Evaluating the assumptions that underlie training policy Ewart Keep and Ken Mayhew; 15. Conclusions: government policy to promote the acquisition of skills Dennis J. Snower and Alison L. Booth; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"As a collection of essays, this volume is a rousing success: the essays are interesting, clever and thought provoking." Industrial and Labor Relations Review

From the Publisher