A systematic account of the causes, consequences, and policy implications of failure in training provision and skills acquisition in the industrial world.

List of figures; List of tables; Preface; List of contributors; 1. Introduction: does the free market produce enough skills? Alison L. Booth and Dennis J. Snower; Part I. Market Failures: the Causes of Skills Gaps: 2. Transferable training and poaching externalities Margaret Stevens; 3. Credit constraints, investment externalities and growth Daron Acemoglu; 4. Education and matching externalities Kenneth Burdett and Eric Smith; 5. Dynamic competition for market share and the failure of the market for skilled labour David Ulph; 6. The low-skill, bad-job trap Dennis J. Snower; Part II. Empirical Consequences of Skills Gaps: 7. Changes in the relative demand for skills Stephen Machin; 8. Skill shortages, productivity growth and wage inflation Jonathan Haskel and Christopher Martin; 9. Workforce skills, product quality and economic performance Geoff Mason, Bart Van Ark, and Karin Wagner; 10. Workforce skills and export competitiveness Nicholas Oulton; Part III. Government Failures and Policy Issues: 11. Market failure and government failure in skills investment David Finegold; 12. Training implications of regulation compliance and business cycles Alan Felstead and Francis Green; 13. On apprenticeship qualifications and labour mobility Alison L. Booth and Stephen Satchell; 14. Evaluating the assumptions that underlie training policy Ewart Keep and Ken Mayhew; 15. Conclusions: government policy to promote the acquisition of skills Dennis J. Snower and Alison L. Booth; Index.