Article Gold Open Access 2025

A bibliometric analysis of the vocational education and training (VET) literature in economics

Economics and Business Letters
Journal · Vol. 14 · Issue 1 · pp. 35-50
Abstract

The literature on Vocational Education and Training is more than six decades old. The current review provides a bibliometric analysis of the literature employing 447 Scopus-indexed documents from 1965 to 2023 in the subject area of “Economics, Econometrics and Finance”. This is the first attempt to analyze VET-related literature published in ABS-listed journals in Economics. We reveal the current trends and show that publications grew substantially after 2014. Four clusters were identified and the most important themes were found to be: “vocational education and skill formation”, “vocational training and labor market outcomes”, “human capital and economic growth” and “apprenticeship contracts and training costs”. Based on the current knowledge structure, we discuss future directions of research. © 2025, Oviedo University Press. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Author Keywords

Vocational education Vocational training Bibliometric analysis human capital skill formation labor market outcomes

Index Keywords

Author Affiliations
Department of Economics, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Central Macedonia, Greece
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No funding information
References 10 References
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