Policies to increase workers skills

Different training policies can serve different objectives. Institutional arrangements to foster cost-sharing can efficiently increase access to formal, accredited and well-recognised training with little burden for the public budget. Co-financing policies that increase the incentive for firms might reduce the possible impact of market failures on aggregate training provision and can be easily financed through specific corporate levies. However, these policies cannot reach those groups that are less likely to receive employer-sponsored training. In this case, co-financing policies targeted to individual demand might become necessary. However, these policies are expensive and might result in substantial waste of public resources if they are not accompanied by interventions to reduce imperfections in the training market.Design is, however, crucial, and it is possible to identify some general principles concerning the desirable characteristics of training policies. Yet, too little is known on their relative efficiency with respect to other potential instruments, due to lack of rigorous evaluation analysis. Hence, taking also into account the methodological complexity of ex-post assessment in this area, evaluation mechanisms should be included into policy design to ensure timely corrections of policy mistakes.