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Technologische vooruitgang zorgt ervoor dat de vraag naar arbeid continu verandert. Hierdoor sluit het menselijk kapitaal van de beroepsbevolking niet altijd aan op de vraag vanuit het bedrijfsleven. Zo remmen personeelstekorten in de informatie- en communicatiesector (ICT) de economische groei.

Human capital theory is based on the idea that workers possess a combination of skills that can be made productive in the labor market. According to human capital theory, differences in the levels of human capital in the workforce explain differences in wages and employment rates. Involuntary unemployment occurs when the supply of human capital in the workforce is not tailored to the corresponding demand by employers. This problem arises when the demand for human capital has changed, for instance, due to technological advancements. This mechanism is especially relevant in the field of information technology (IT), where new technologies are introduced rapidly, shifting the demand for skills in the IT sector.As a general policy instrument to combat involuntary unemployment, governments around the world invest in different kinds of labor market programs that are categorized under the umbrella term of active labor market policy (ALMP). The goal of these programs is to improve the labor market outcomes of the participants, including employment rates and earnings. The motivation behind ALMP is to achieve this goal through human capital formation. After participating in the ALMP, the human capital of the participants should be more tailored to demand than before participating. Human capital theory predicts that when ALMP improves the human capital of the participants, this in turn leads to improved labor market outcomes, such as employment rates and earnings.In undertaking an analysis of human capital theory and labor market policy, this PhD thesis has four objectives. The first is to determine what makes ALMP effective. The second objective is to identify the skills and abilities that employers seek when recruiting new IT personnel for retraining. The third objective involves estimating the determinants of enrollment, study success and dropout in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in higher education. The final aim is to evaluate the effectiveness of a specific IT retraining program in the Netherlands, which is an ALMP set up in co-operation between the public and private sectors and is specifically aimed at highly educated workers.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a discrete choice experiment (DCE) on the competencies of potential information technology (IT)-retrainees. The results give insights in the monetary value and relative returns to both soft and hard skills. Design/methodology/approach The authors apply a DCE in which the authors propose seven pairs of hypothetical candidates to employers based in the municipality of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. These hypothetical candidates differ on six observable skill attributes and have different starting wages. The authors use the inference from the DCE to calculate the marginal rates of substitution (MRS). The MRS gives an indication of the monetary value of each skill attribute. Findings Employers prefer a candidate who possesses a degree in an exact field over a similar candidate from another discipline. Programming experience from previous jobs is the most highly valued characteristic for an IT-retrainee. Employers would pay a candidate with basic programming experience a 53 percent higher starting wage. The most high-valued soft skill is listening skills, for which employers are willing to pay a 46 percent higher wage. The results of this paper show that both hard and soft skills are important, but not all soft skills are equally important. Originality/value The results on the returns to skills provide guidelines to tailor IT training and retraining programs to the needs of the business environment. A key strength of this paper is that the authors have information on the preference orderings for different skills and kinds of experience.

This paper provides a meta-analysis of microeconometric evaluation studies on the effectiveness of active labor market policies. The analysis is built upon a systematically assembled data set of causal impact estimates from 57 experimental and quasi-experimental studies, providing 654 estimates published between January 1990 and December 2017. We distinguish between the short and longer term impacts in our analysis; at 6, 12, 24, and 36 months after program start. After correcting for publication bias and country-specific macroeconomic characteristics, subsidized labor and public employment programs have negative short-term impacts, which gradually turn positive in the longer run. Schemes with enhanced services including job-search assistance and training programs do not have these negative short-term effects, and stay positive from 6 until 36 months after program start.