Question

A justification for job training programs is that they improve worker productivity. Suppose that you are asked to evaluate whether more job training makes workers more productive. However, rather than having data on individual workers, you have access to data on manufacturing firms in Ohio. In particular, for each firm, you have information on hours of job training per worker (training) and number of non-defective items produced per worker (output).

Required:
a. Carefully state the ceteris paribus thought experiment underlying this policy question.
b. Does it seem likely that a firm’s decision to train its workers will be independent ofworker characteristics? What are some of those measurable and unmeasurable workercharacteristics?
c. Name a factor other than worker characteristics that can affect worker productivity.
d. If you find a positive correlation between output and training, would you haveconvincingly established that job training makes workers more productive? Explain.

Answer 1

a). There is a way to state the question :

If there are two firms, firm A and firm B. Both the forms are same in all the respects but differ in only one thing, that firm A provides job training 1 hour per worker more than the number of hours of training of firm B, by how much the output of firm A would differ than the output from firm B?

b). The manufacturing firms that are located in Ohio will provide the job training based on the characteristics of workers. Some of the determining factors includes years of schooling, experience in a particular job, etc. The firms can even consider the worker's age, race or gender. The training will be provided to the less efficient workers based on their ability.

c). The amount of the capital as well as the technology that is available to the workers would affect the output of the firm. Thus the firms having the same kind of employees would have different outputs when the firms used different technology or different amount of capital.

d). No, unless the training is randomly assigned. The factors are listed above which can contribute to the finding of a positive correlation between the output and the training even when the job training does not improve the productivity of the worker.