Minimum Wages and the Structure of Training

Katarina Zigova and Thomas Zwick

No 242, Economics of Education Working Paper Series from University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW)

Abstract: We find a positive effect of minimum wages on continuing professional training. Several Swiss cantons introduced high and strongly binding minimum wages in the period 2018-2022. We apply a stacked diff-in-diff estimation model to identify the dynamic policy effect on training. Drawing on several surveys with extensive details on employees' training, we find robust evidence of an increase in training incidence and intensity. The positive effect is mainly driven by firm-financed formal training during working hours that covers contents beyond current professional activities. There are substantial ripple effects and most workers experience extra training, irrespective of their tenure and wage level. We argue that the strong minimum wage bite and our ability to measure the full dynamic training effects on all employees in treated cantons explain the difference between our findings and those in the previous theoretical and empirical literature.

Keywords: minimum wages; adult training; staggered policy introduction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J08 J51 M53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2025-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-inv and nep-lab
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iso:educat:0242

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