Published in: Oxford Economic Papers 50 (1998). 266-283.
This paper attempts to unravel supply and demand factors of work-related training by exploiting information from workers who wanted to receive such training but did not get it. Workers' willingness to receive training varies with their level of education, background characteristics, and job characteristics. Firms' gains from training vary across industries, and with workers' gender and age. Half of the untrained workers are not trained because the net returns to the worker would be negative, while the net returns to the firm would be positive. For another third of the untrained workersexactly the opposite is the case.