Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/142350 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 9911
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
To increase employee participation in training activities, the German government introduced a large-scale training voucher program in 2008 that reduces training fees by half. Based on a randomized field experiment, this paper analyzes whether providing information about the existence and the conditions of the training voucher had an effect on actual training activities of employees. Because the voucher was newly introduced, only one-fourth of the eligible employees knew the voucher exists at the time of the experiment. The information intervention informed a random sample of eligible employees by telephone about the program details and conditions. The results indicate that the information significantly increased treated individuals' knowledge of the program but had no effect on voucher take-up or participation in training activities. Additional descriptive analyses suggest that the reasons for these zero effects are that the demand for self-financed training is low and that liquidity constraints do not discourage many employees from training participation.
Subjects: 
training participation
voucher
financial aid
randomized field experiment
information treatment
JEL: 
I22
D83
H52
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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