Advanced Digital Technologies and Investment in Employee Training

Giorgio Brunello (), Désirée Rückert, Christoph T. Weiss and Patricia Wruuck
Additional contact information
Giorgio Brunello: University of Padova
Désirée Rückert: European Investment Bank
Christoph T. Weiss: European Investment Bank
Patricia Wruuck: German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action

No 315, "Marco Fanno" Working Papers from Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno"

Abstract: Using firm-level data covering 25 EU countries, the UK and the US and a difference-in-differences approach, we show that employers adopting advanced digital technologies reduce their investment in training per employee. Compared to non-adapting firms, this reduction is negligible on impact but increases to -11.3 and -13.8 percent of the pre-treatment mean two and three years after adoption. It can be decomposed into two contrasting effects: the increase in the probability of investing in training and the reduction in investment by firms with positive training. We argue that a candidate reason for the decline in investment in training per employee is that the use of advanced digital technologies and employee training are substitutes in production, implying that an increase in the former negatively affects the marginal productivity of the latter. Our findings point to challenges in realizing high levels of firm-sponsored training for employees in increasingly digital economies.

Keywords: Digital Technologies; Investment in Employee Training. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2024-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm and nep-ict
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://economia.unipd.it/sites/economia.unipd.it/files/20240315.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pad:wpaper:0315

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in "Marco Fanno" Working Papers from Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno" Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Raffaele Dei Campielisi ().