The Provision and Effects of Company Training: A Brief Review of the Literature

Abstract

This paper reviews recent empirical research on economic benefits of company-provided training in search for answers to questions such as: What kinds of training do companies provide? Who is trained? How intensively? For what reason? Do trained employees experience an earnings advantage over non-trained? Does training enhance employability, mobility, and promotion? Do companies, and the society at large, benefit from these investments? Despite growing interest in these questions, our current knowledge on the economic role of company-provided training demands great cautiousness in drawing policy implications concerning the crucial questions of inequality of access to company training and training market failures, among others.