1、 外文翻译 原文 Does increased international competition increase the need for training? Material Source: Applied Economics letters,2007,14,151-155 Author: Pal Schone Both politicians and parties in the labour market have in recent yearsstressed the importance of work-related training.Globalization,anincre
2、ased international competition,is often said to be one importantfactor determining the need for more work-related training.The relation-ship between increased international competition and more training hasalmost become a stylized fact.However,we argue that this relationship isnot empirically well e
3、nough founded.Therefore,in this note we test this relationship by answering the following question:Is it true that firmsoperating in an international competitive arena invest more in training fortheir workers compared to firms not operating in an internationalcompetitive arena?Evidence from represen
4、tative firm-level data suggeststhat the answer is yes.Manufacturing firms operating in an internationalcompetitive arena do invest more in training for their workers compared to firms not operating in an international competitive arena.A natural interpretation of this result is that these firms resp
5、ond to demands from fierce international competition by skilling their workforce through training at work. I.Introduction Training in the labour market has received an increasing amount of attention in recent years,both from politicians,parties in the labour market and researchers(see e.g.Oosterbeek
6、,1996;Lynch and Black,1998;Groot,1999;Harris,1999;Frazis,et al.,2000;Molina and Ortega,2003).There seems to be a wide consensus regarding a couple of factors justifying this increased interest.One such factor is increased international competition.The general argument is that increased international
7、 competitionspurs the need for a skilled and well-adjusted work-force,and training at the workplace is one efficient way to acquire a skilled workforce.In OECD(1999),it is written in the introduction:The critical importance of a highly skilled workforce in an increasinglyglobalisedandcomputerisedeco
8、nomy has become a commonplace.Furthermore,in Lynch and Black(1998),in the introduction:Increasing international competition,new technologies such as computers and changing work organization have spurred the discussion of the ways in which workers acquire new skills for a rapidly evolving labor marke
9、t.Similar introductory remarks are found in Frazis et al.(1995). The positive relationship between fierce international competition and work-related training is often mentioned in the introductory chapters as background information to motivate other empirical analyses,presented almost as a stylized
10、fact. However,while the relationship between new tech-nologies and training and the relationship between new forms of work organization and training has received a fairly large amount of empirical attention(LynchandBlack,1998;Frazis et al.,2000;Bresnahanan et al.,2002;Falk,2002),we will arguethat th
11、e positive relationship between increased international competition and training is more of an assertion than it is an empirically well-founded fact.The purpose of this note is simple:We wish to meet this shortage,by testing empirically the relationship between international competition and training
12、 at the workplace.We do this by answering the following question:Is it true that firms that operate in an international competitive arena invest more in training for their workers compared to firms that do not operate in an international competitive arena?To answer this question we use a matched cro
13、ss section employeremployee dataset containing both survey and register information for a representative sample of Norwegian firms. II.Data and Variables The starting point is an establishment level survey of Norwegian establishments conducted by the Institute for Social Research and Statistics Norw
14、ay in 2003. The sample of establishments is representative for private and public establishments in Norwaywith more than 10 employees.To the survey establishmentsStatistics Norway has linked register information from several public administrative registers,including both employee and employer level
15、information.Analyses in this note are limited to private sector firms.The net sample consists of 968 firms.The dependent variable is employer reported information on the firms total costs on training during the preceding interview-year.The question was:What was the total cost of training and skill d
16、evelopment in 2002 for this company?We ask you to include costs related to formal training or courses.The key explanatory variables are employer reported information on their main market and the degree of competition in this market.Information on the firms main market is based on answers to the ques
17、tion:What is the firms main market?Six alternatives are given:(1)This municipality;(2)This part of the country;(3)Norway;(4)Scandinavia;(5)Europe besides Scandinavia;(6)Other foreign countries.We construct a dummy variable:Foreign, taking the value 1 if the respondent answers 4,5 or 6, and 0 otherwi
18、se.Information on the degree of competition in the firms main market is based on answers to the question:Is the firm exposed to a large,some,small,or no degree of competition in the main market today?We construct a dummy variable: High competition,taking the value 1 if the respondent answerslarge,0
19、otherwise.In addition,we include a battery of control variables:Firm level controls include information on firm location,size,industry,use of hired personnel,as well as indicators for technology,and new work practices.Employee level controls include information on gender,age,level of education,senio
20、rity,working time and union density.All employee level variables are aggregated and measured as averages at the firm level.The construc- tion of the control variables is explained in the notes to Table 1.Descriptive statistics are presented in Appendix. III.Results Table 1 presents ordinary least sq
21、uare(OLS) estimates of the relationship between international competition and training costs.We use log of training costs.By using logs we restrict the analyses to firms reporting positive training costs,i.e.our analyses are conditional on positive training costs.We present three models.Model 1 pres
22、ents estimates for the whole sample,model 2 presents estimates for firms in the manufacturing industry and model 3 presents estimates for nonmanufacturing firms. The test whether firms that operate in interna- tional markets with though competition invest more in training compared to other firms,is
23、measured by the interaction term between Foreign and High competition(Foreign High competition). In model 1,the interaction term is positive and significant(at 5%).Therefore,the combination of operating in a foreign market and a market with though competition is positively related to training costs
24、at the firm.This result is in favour of the argument that high international competition spurs training.The coefficient of the interaction term indicates that the relationship is quite large in size. Firms which main market is abroad,and who face though competition in this market have 59% higher tra
25、ining costs compared to a firm which main market is domestic,and who faces no though competition in this market.1 It is only the combination of operating in a foreign market and facing high competition that is significantly related to training. Neither operating in a foreign market nor facing high c
26、ompetition is in itself significantly related to training.Regarding the control variables,most of the relationships are as expected and in line with other studies:Training increases with union density, level of education and ICT costs and decreases with the share of female workers at the firm(see e.
27、g. OECD,1991;Leuven and Osterbeek,1999;Pischke,2001;Arulampalam et al.,2003). Models 2 and 3 distinguish between manufacturing firms and nonmanufacturing firms.We do this because the share of firms report that their main market is foreign is very different for manufacturing and nonmanufacturing firm
28、s.Of the manufacturing firms,44%report that their main market is abroad, compared to 10%of the nonmanufacturing firms. The estimates reveal that it is only for manufacturing firms that we find a positive relationship between foreign and high competition,i.e.it is only for manufacturing firms that we
29、 receive support for the argument that increased international competition increases the need for workrelated training. The main conclusion to be drawn from Table 1 is that among manufacturing firms,strong international competition goes along with high-training costs. Therefore,for firms in the manu
30、facturing industry, the assertion of a positive relationship between international competition and training is backed by empirical evidence. IV.Conclusions The purpose with this note is simple:To test the relationship between international competition and training.It has almost become a stylized fac
31、t that one factor behind increased training activity in recent years is the increased international competition. Increased international competition spurs the need for a skilled and well-adjusted workforce,and training at the workplace is one way to acquire a skilled workforce.This is plausible,but
32、we argue that this assertion is not well enough backed up by empirical analyses. In this note,we have tried to shed some light on this matter by testing whether firms that operate in an international competitive arena invest more in training for their workers compared to firms that do not operate in
33、 an international competitive arena.Cross section firm level evidence from a representative sample of Norwegian firms support the hypothesis that firms that operate in a foreign competitive market do invest more in training compared to other firms.One natural interpretation of this result is that th
34、ese firms respond to demands from fierce international competition by skilling their workforce through training at work. Further work should be undertaken to confirm this result.In particular,the issue of unobserved firm heterogeneity should be analysed.This requires panel information on training co
35、sts and measures of competition and foreign markets. Acknowledgements Many thanks to Hege Torp and seminar participants at Institute for social research for valuable comments to an earlier draft.Financial support from The Research Council of Norway(project number 156035/50)is gratefully acknowledged
36、. 译文 剧烈的国际竞争是否导致培训需求的增加 资料来源 : Applied Economics Letters,2007,14,151-155 作者： Pal Schone 近年来，无论是政治家还是政党在劳动力市场上都深切体会到不断接受与工作相关的培训课程的重要性。全球化不仅意味着国际间竞争的加剧，通常也被认定是确定业务培训需求的一个重要因素。日益增长的国际化竞争与培训需求增加之间的关系几乎已经成为了 一种固定的模式。然而，我们认为这种关系的建立是没有大量事实可以去实践证明的。因此，在这篇文章里我们将通过回答以下这个问题来“考验”这种关系，即：国际化的大企业在对员工培训上的投入是不是真的多于
37、其他企业？而我们通过收集一些代表性公司在这方面的数据来看，这个答案是肯定的。并且我们还可以看到，国际化的大型制造型企业对员工培训投入比那些非国际化制造型企业要多出很多。其实这个结论并不难解释，这些国际化大企业要应对国际化竞争导致的剧烈竞争，必然要通过培训来提高员工技能，加强他们的竞争力。 1.背景介绍 近几年来，培训在 劳动力供需市场上引起了广泛的注意，不仅吸引了政治家、政党，还导致了一大批学者去研究（如 0osterbeek,1996;Lynch and Black,1998;Groot,1999;Harris,1999;Frazis, etal., 2000;MolinaandOrtega
38、,2003）。学术上最这个现象有很多解释，即人们被吸引到培训这个领域上有很多种说法，其中一个说法就是日益加剧的国际竞争导致员工对于培训需求的增加。大多数学者认为国际竞争的加剧使得企业对拥有高技能员工和和适应能力强的员工需求大大增加，而培 训就是获得这种优质员工的一种有效方法。经济合作和发展组织（ 1999）介绍指出：“在现代日益全球化和电子化的经济发展过程中，强调高技能员工的重要性已经成了老生常谈。”此外，在 Lynch 和 Blcak的研究中也指出：“国际竞争的加剧，新的科学技术如计算机技术和项目管理技术，推进了关于为适应快速发展的劳工市场要怎么样去学习新技能的大讨论。”同样的， Frazi
39、s, et al.也在其著作中最这个说法做了解释说明。 剧烈的国际竞争与员工培训之间的关系表现出来的积极的一面，这个方面的提及通常是在一些介绍性章节， 其出现的形式通常是两者之间的关系作为一种背景资料来促进其他的时间经验的分析效率，也以固定的形式呈现在读者面前。然而，新技术与培训之间的关系，新的组织形式和培训之间的关系的研究已经获得了相当一部分经验主义者的注意力 (Lynch and Black,1998;Frazis et al.,2000; Bresnahanan et al.,2002; Falk,2002)，我们可以发现剧烈的国际竞争与员工之间关系的积极面与其说是以经验为主建立的关系的
40、方面，不如说是一种论断，一种已经成为一个流派的学术成果。因此，面对这样一种学术环境，本文的目的很简单：笔者希望通过测试国际竞争与在岗培训之间的关系，从而发现这个过程中还存在什么不足之处。本文的研究也是基于以下这个问题：国际化的大企业为其员工培训的投入是不是真的要多于非国际化的企业？为了回答这个问题，本文采用了一家具有代表性的挪威公司中相匹配雇主和雇员的信息作为抽样调查对象，其中包括了实证调查得到的数据和记录在案的二手信息的搜集。 2.数据和变量 调查是以 2003 年由挪威社会调查和统计机构承办的一项关于挪威公司设施的水平调查为出发点的，调查样本是挪威 10名来自私人货公众机构的典型代表。未了
41、更好的分析调查机构得到的数据的统计，挪威已经把几个公共管理部门信息登记处的信息结合起来，包括了雇主和雇员的各项水平信息。本文中数据的分析局限于私人公司。然而整个样本包括 968家公司。决定性的变量因素是雇主在年报中对照片前一年员工培训的总费用的报告。而我们提出的问题是：“这家公司 2002 年在培训与技能发展上投入的总成本是多少？我们希望你给的答案中包括 与正式的培训内容和课程有关的培训工作的总费用”。 最核心的解释变量是管理者关于他们企业的主要市场份额以及他们在这个市场上的竞争力的报告。要得到公司主要市场份额的报告的信息主要基于以下问题：“公司主要的市场是哪一块？”有 6个选项可以选择：（
42、1）这个是属于什么市级辖区；（ 2）这个市场是属于国家的那个部分；（ 3）挪威；（ 4）斯堪的纳维亚；（ 5）除斯堪的纳维亚外的欧洲区；（ 6）其他国家。我们假设一个虚拟的变量：外国，如果选择的是选项 4， 5或者 6就是属性 1其他的选项就是属性 0。公司在主要市场上的竞争力度的信息来源主要 通过回答以下下面的问题：“这家公司现在在市场的竞争力是属于大还是小，或者说根本没有竞争力？”我们同样构造一个虚拟变量：剧烈竞争，如果回答的“大”的话就标注为属性 1，其他回答就标记为 0。此外，我们还有一个备用的控制变量 :公司级别的可控，包括公司地址、规模、所属行业，公司招聘政策，同时还有对先进科技的投入和新员工的实践。员工层次的控制包括性别，年龄，受教育程度，任职资格，工作时间和参与工会程度。所有员工层次的变量都是集中在一起的并且被当做公司的平均水平来测量。对不可变量的构建的解释说明见表格 1。描述性的统计数字 详见附录。 3.统计结果 表一表示用最小二乘法得出国际化竞争跟培训费用之间的关系。我们对培训费用做对数分析。通过使用对数我们限制了公司关于培训费用积极性的分析，例如，我们对培训费用的积极性方面作了限制分析。我们分析总结出了三种模型。模型 1是给整个样本的估计值，模型 2是制造型企业的估计值，模型 3是非制造型企业的估计值。
