Agglomeration Effects on Employer-Provided Training: Evidence from the UK

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IZA Seminar

Place: Schaumburg-Lippe-Str. 9, 53113 Bonn

Date: 06.07.2004, 12:15 - 13:30

   

Presentation by 

Giorgio Brunello (University of Padova)
   

Abstract:

Recent empirical evidence suggests that the density of local economic activity – measured as
the number of employees per squared kilometer – positively affects local average
productivity. In this paper we use British data from the European Community Household
Panel to ask whether local density affects employer–provided training. We find that training is
less frequent in economically denser areas. We explain this result as the outcome of the
interaction between the positive pooling effects and negative poaching and turnover effects
of agglomeration. The size of the negative effect of density is not negligible: when evaluated
at the average firm size in the local area, a 10 percent increase in density reduces the
probability of employer–provided training by 0.07, more than 20 percent of the average
incidence of training in the UK during the sample period.

   
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