Article 2024

The effect of workplace vs school-based vocational education on youth unemployment: Evidence from France

European Economic Review
Journal · Vol. 162 · Art. 104637
Abstract

We conducted a field experiment in France which shows that employers exhibit little preference when deciding whom to invite for job interviews: unemployed apprentices or vocational students, both of whom have earned the same diploma. By merging the results of this experiment with a search and matching model which accounts for the selection of apprentices retained by their training firms, we provide a framework to understand the ways in which apprenticeship influences youth employment. Our results indicate that the main positive impact on employment comes from retaining apprentices within their training company, while the productivity gap compared to vocational students remains minimal when the same skills can be acquired through the academic path or apprenticeship. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.

Keywords

Author Keywords

Apprenticeship Vocational education school-to-work transitions Field experiment Search and matching

Index Keywords

training workplace Vocational education student skilled labor educational attainment unemployment young population France
Author Affiliations
THEMA, Paris, France, CY Cergy Paris Université, Cergy-Pontoise, Ile-de-France, France
Sciences Po, France, France, IZA, Munich, Germany, Centre for Economic Policy Research, London, London, United Kingdom
Funding & Acknowledgements
Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology, CREST
Funding text 1: We are grateful to Philippe Zamora, Mathilde Gaini, Marine Guillerm and Cécile Ballini for helpful guidance during the experiment. We are also indebted to Marie-Camille Alban, Elika Athari, Sarah Cohen, Karim El Charkawy, Demba Konate, Hugo Lapeyronie, Salomé Leblanc, Komivi Seshie, and Loic Valck, for excellent research assistance. We thank Moshe Buchinsky, Amanda Gaulke, Paul Ryan and participants from the CREST, AMSE, GAINS, IREDU, THEMA, University of Bern seminars, and the participants to the 8th LEER Conference on Education Economics for their helpful comments. This work also benefited from judicious comments from two anonymous referees and an associate-editor. This project has been conducted under the patronage of the Chaire Sécurisation des parcours professionnels ( http://www.chaire-securisation.fr ), the partners of which are the Ministry of Labor, Pole Emploi (Public Employment Service), UNEDIC (Public Unemployment Insurance), Alpha (Consultancy firms specialized in labor relations) Sciences Po and CREST-ENSAE. The steering committee of the chair, composed of representatives of these institutions, approved the related experiment without imposing any constraint on the design proposed by the authors. It has been administratively supported by the Institut Louis Bachelier. The data and the code to replicate the empirical results of this article are available online at https://github.com/jhervelin/apprenticeship_replication . The original data of the Enquête Génération are available upon request at Réseau Quetelet https://commande.progedo.fr/en/utilisateur/connexion .; Funding text 2: ☆ We are grateful to Philippe Zamora, Mathilde Gaini, Marine Guillerm and Cécile Ballini for helpful guidance during the experiment. We are also indebted to Marie-Camille Alban, Elika Athari, Sarah Cohen, Karim El Charkawy, Demba Konate, Hugo Lapeyronie, Salomé Leblanc, Komivi Seshie, and Loic Valck, for excellent research assistance. We thank Moshe Buchinsky, Amanda Gaulke, Paul Ryan and participants from the CREST, AMSE, GAINS, IREDU, THEMA, University of Bern seminars, and the participants to the 8th LEER Conference on Education Economics for their helpful comments. This work also benefited from judicious comments from two anonymous referees and an associate-editor. This project has been conducted under the patronage of the Chaire Sécurisation des parcours professionnels ( http://www.chaire-securisation.fr), the partners of which are the Ministry of Labor, Pole Emploi (Public Employment Service), UNEDIC (Public Unemployment Insurance), Alpha (Consultancy firms specialized in labor relations) Sciences Po and CREST-ENSAE. The steering committee of the chair, composed of representatives of these institutions, approved the related experiment without imposing any constraint on the design proposed by the authors. It has been administratively supported by the Institut Louis Bachelier. The data and the code to replicate the empirical results of this article are available online at https://github.com/jhervelin/apprenticeship_replication. The original data of the Enquête Génération are available upon request at Réseau Quetelet https://commande.progedo.fr/en/utilisateur/connexion.
Institut Louis Bachelier
Funding text 1: We are grateful to Philippe Zamora, Mathilde Gaini, Marine Guillerm and Cécile Ballini for helpful guidance during the experiment. We are also indebted to Marie-Camille Alban, Elika Athari, Sarah Cohen, Karim El Charkawy, Demba Konate, Hugo Lapeyronie, Salomé Leblanc, Komivi Seshie, and Loic Valck, for excellent research assistance. We thank Moshe Buchinsky, Amanda Gaulke, Paul Ryan and participants from the CREST, AMSE, GAINS, IREDU, THEMA, University of Bern seminars, and the participants to the 8th LEER Conference on Education Economics for their helpful comments. This work also benefited from judicious comments from two anonymous referees and an associate-editor. This project has been conducted under the patronage of the Chaire Sécurisation des parcours professionnels ( http://www.chaire-securisation.fr ), the partners of which are the Ministry of Labor, Pole Emploi (Public Employment Service), UNEDIC (Public Unemployment Insurance), Alpha (Consultancy firms specialized in labor relations) Sciences Po and CREST-ENSAE. The steering committee of the chair, composed of representatives of these institutions, approved the related experiment without imposing any constraint on the design proposed by the authors. It has been administratively supported by the Institut Louis Bachelier. The data and the code to replicate the empirical results of this article are available online at https://github.com/jhervelin/apprenticeship_replication . The original data of the Enquête Génération are available upon request at Réseau Quetelet https://commande.progedo.fr/en/utilisateur/connexion .; Funding text 2: ☆ We are grateful to Philippe Zamora, Mathilde Gaini, Marine Guillerm and Cécile Ballini for helpful guidance during the experiment. We are also indebted to Marie-Camille Alban, Elika Athari, Sarah Cohen, Karim El Charkawy, Demba Konate, Hugo Lapeyronie, Salomé Leblanc, Komivi Seshie, and Loic Valck, for excellent research assistance. We thank Moshe Buchinsky, Amanda Gaulke, Paul Ryan and participants from the CREST, AMSE, GAINS, IREDU, THEMA, University of Bern seminars, and the participants to the 8th LEER Conference on Education Economics for their helpful comments. This work also benefited from judicious comments from two anonymous referees and an associate-editor. This project has been conducted under the patronage of the Chaire Sécurisation des parcours professionnels ( http://www.chaire-securisation.fr), the partners of which are the Ministry of Labor, Pole Emploi (Public Employment Service), UNEDIC (Public Unemployment Insurance), Alpha (Consultancy firms specialized in labor relations) Sciences Po and CREST-ENSAE. The steering committee of the chair, composed of representatives of these institutions, approved the related experiment without imposing any constraint on the design proposed by the authors. It has been administratively supported by the Institut Louis Bachelier. The data and the code to replicate the empirical results of this article are available online at https://github.com/jhervelin/apprenticeship_replication. The original data of the Enquête Génération are available upon request at Réseau Quetelet https://commande.progedo.fr/en/utilisateur/connexion.
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