Vocational training as a force for equality?: Training opportunities and outcomes in France and Britain Available to Purchase

This article presents an estimation of the incidence and the impact on wages of employer provided training in two countries with different legal systems concerning this type of vocational training, France and Britain. A selectivity bias correction method is used to estimate the real impact of training on wages. This shows that, if the selection in training processes are quite similar in the two countries according to the statistically observable characteristics, this is not the case according to statistically non observable characteristics. Our results show that the “less efficient” workers (level of education, seniority, experience, firm size … being equal) are more likely to be trained by their employers in France, which does not seem to be the case in Britain. We explain this result by the fact that the two countries have a different legal system concerning employer provided training.