The measurement and determinants of skill acquisition in young workers' first job

The article analyses participation in five types of training (formal on-site, formal off-site, informal co-worker training, learning by watching and learning by doing) and self-assessed skill acquisition in young Flemish workers' first job. A skill production function is estimated whereby the simultaneity of participation in the different types of training and skill acquisition is taken into account. The results clearly demonstrate the importance of informal training. Formal training participation is found to be only a fraction of total training participation. Moreover, the determinants of total training participation and skill acquisition differ from those of formal training participation. While some training types are complementary, others are clearly substitutes. Finally, most types of training generate additional skills. Nonetheless, learning by doing is found to be complementary to formal education in the production of both specific and general skills, whereas formal training serves as a substitute

π\pi-Variation with remainder

Let b: R+ ¿ R+ be an O-regularly varying function. In this paper we are concerned with the class of functions L for which there exists a function a: R+ ¿ R such that L(tx) - L(x) - a(x) log(t) = O(b(x)) as x ¿ 8 for t > 0. We also discuss Abel-Tauber-Mercer theorems for a class of integral transforms of these functions

The impact of education on job satisfaction in the first job

Relying on survey data for Flemish 23 year old workers, we estimate three ordinal regression models to clear out the determinants of job satisfaction in the first job. Special attention goes to the influence of education. The results indicate that higher educated people seem more satisfied than lower educated people because they get a better job. When we control for all characteristics of the job, a negative relationship shows up, with higher educated people being less happy about their first job. Our results also suggest that giving young employees the possibility to use their skills in a varied job contributes strongly to job satisfaction. The relationship between educational mismatch and job satisfaction is ambiguous. Overeducation has a clear negative impact on job satisfaction, but for undereducation we obtain different results for men and women. In contrast to existing literature we also find a gender effect for young workers and a positive impact of working in a large company. We observe no impact of the occupational status of the parents nor of the characteristics of the employment contract.