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Human capital is the key competitive factor in the developed world. Similar to other types of investments, the decision to invest in human capital is the result of comparing costs and benefits. The traditional cost-benefit analyses, however, do not explain several widespread phenomena, such as a puzzling large number of workers departing from their initially chosen educational paths or even refraining from training at all as well as the existence of firms that provide training although for them this investment does not (directly) pay. Going beyond traditional cost-benefit analyses of vocational education and further training our findings demonstrate that the mentioned puzzles can be solved by the innovations we provide: first of all, we show that it is important to take into account that each educational or further training step is part of a complete educational and training strategy and should, thus, not be analyzed in isolation. Indeed, we find that combinations of different types of human capital varying in their degree of work and labor market relations are at least as competitive as straight educational paths. Second, although wage increases for workers and productivity increases for firms are certainly important benefits, it is a serious shortcoming for the analysis of training decisions if other types of benefits are neglected. In particular, long-term benefits in terms of better prospects on the labor market for workers and indirect benefits in terms of increased overall recruitment success for firms turn out to be decisive. Third, concentrating on monetary costs only is a serious shortcoming as well. In addition to monetary cost components there are also substantial non-monetary costs, especially in terms of time, attached to training participation, and these costs are at least as decisive. Notably, time restrictions seem to be an even more serious hurdle for training participation than liquidity constraints. Fourth, although cost and benefit measures are most important for training decisions, there are other factors that have been widely neglected so far, i.e., risk preferences, information asymmetries and time preferences. We show that these should also be considered as crucial factors in educational and training decisions. Humankapital gilt heute in der industrialisierten Welt als der zentrale Wettbewerbsfaktor. Die Entscheidung, in Humankapital zu investieren, ist - wie die Entscheidung, andere Arten von Investitionen zu tatigen - das Ergebnis eines Kosten-Nutzen-Vergleichs. Allerdings konnen traditionelle Kosten-Nutzen-Analysen zahlreiche weit verbreitete Phanomene nicht erklaren. So beobachten wir eine bedeutende Anzahl an Arbeitnehmern, die von ihrem ursprunglich eingeschlagenen Ausbildungspfad abweichen, Personen, die ganz generell Bildungsmassnahmen fernbleiben, und Firmen, die Bildungsmassnahmen anbieten, obwohl sich diese fur sie nicht (direkt) auszuzahlen scheinen. In der vorliegenden Arbeit schlagen wir deshalb innovative Erweiterungen des traditionellen Kosten-Nutzen-Modells vor, die mit den genannten Beobachtungen vereinbar sind: Erstens muss berucksichtigt werden, dass jeder Aus- und Weiterbildungsschritt Teil einer kompletten Bildungsstrategie ist und deshalb nicht isoliert betrachtet werden darf. Tatsachlich finden wir, dass Bildungspfade, welche verschiedene, sich hinsichtlich Berufs- und Arbeitsmarktbezug unterscheidende Bildungstypen umfassen, mindestens genauso wettbewerbsfahig sind wie geradlinige Bildungspfade. Zweitens zeigen wir, dass eine Gehaltserhohung fur Arbeitnehmer und ein Produktivitatszuwachs fur Firmen zwar wichtige Nutzenkomponenten darstellen, dass aber eine Analyse, die andere Ertragsarten vernachlassigt, deutlich zu kurz greift. Insbesondere scheinen fur Arbeitnehmer langfristige Ertrage aufgrund verbesserter Arbeitsmarktchancen und fur Unternehmen ein indirekter Nutzen in Form eines erhohten Rekrutierungserfolgs zentral. Drittens weisen wir darauf hin, dass auch eine ausschliessliche Berucksichtigung monetarer Kosten unzulanglich ist. So ist eine Investition in Bildung ebenfalls mit nicht- monetaren Kosten verbunden, wobei speziell die fur den Besuch der Bildungsmassnahme aufgebrachte Zeit gemeint ist. Bemerkenswert ist denn auch der Befund, dass Zeitrestriktionen eine bedeutend hohere Hurde fur (Weiter-)Bildungsmassnahmen darstellen als Liquiditatsbeschrankungen. Viertens belegen wir, dass neben den genannten Kosten- und Nutzenaspekten weitere Faktoren wie Risikopraferenzen, Informationsasymmetrien und Zeitpraferenzen entscheidende Determinanten fur Aus- und Weiterbildungsentscheidungen sind.

"Although participation in continuing vocational training is often found to be associated with considerable individual benefits, a puzzlingly large number of people still do not take part in training. In order to solve the puzzle we distinguish between temporary and chronic non-participants. Previous studies have shown that training participants and non-participants differ in unobservable characteristics and therefore self-select into training or not. We show that even non-participants cannot be treated as a homogeneous group: there are those who never take part in training (chronic non-participants) and those who are not currently taking part (temporary (non-)participants). Using a unique data set of non-participants commissioned by the German 'Expert Commission on Financing Lifelong Learning' and covering a very large number of individuals not taking part in training, we separate and compare chronic and temporary non-participants. By estimating a sample selection model using maximum likelihood estimation we take potential selection effects into account: temporary (non-)participants may be more motivated or may have different inherent skills than chronic nonparticipants. We find that chronic non-participants would have higher costs than temporary (non-)participants and their short-term benefits associated with their current jobs would be lower. However, in the long run even chronic non-participants would benefit similarly from participation due to improved prospects on the labor market. The results indicate that chronic non-participants either misperceive future developments or suffer from an exceptionally high discount rate, which in turn leads in their view to a negative cost-benefit ratio for training." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en)) Additional Information Kurzfassung (deutsch) Executive summary (English)