اثرات بازار کار کل دانش برنامه آسانسور سوئدی

The Swedish adult education program known as the Knowledge Lift (1997–2002) was unprecedented in its size and scope, aiming to raise the skill level of large numbers of low-skill workers. This paper evaluates the potential effects of this program on aggregate labor market outcomes. This is done by calibrating an equilibrium search model with heterogeneous worker skills using pre-program data and then forecasting the program impacts. We compare the forecasts to observed aggregate labor market outcomes after termination of the program.

Life-long learning, adult education, and employability have become focal points in the labor market policies of many advanced economies (see e.g. the recent OECD Employment Outlook 2004). It is expected that these economies will face more turbulent conditions than in the past and that the development of novel production technologies will proceed at a sustained high speed. This will require a flexible and suitably skilled workforce. Indeed, the role of low-educated workers has diminished in modern knowledge-based economies. The fact that there is now a heavier representation of older workers in the labor force means that the human capital adjustment needs to be made by the existing stock of workers rather than solely by the inflow of new workers.

Our theoretical analysis of an equilibrium search model with heterogeneity, together with the calibration of the model and the simulation of the policy change, provide some interesting insights into the equilibrium effects of the knowledge lift program. Most notably, according to the model, the program should generate an equilibrium change in the skill distribution of vacancies towards higher skills. In our simulations, as the fraction of medium-skill workers in the labor force increases at the expense of the fraction of low-skill workers, the fraction of vacancies tailored towards the medium-skill workers increases commensurately, almost one-for-one. This change in vacancy composition leads to corresponding changes in the skill-specific unemployment rates and in the wages paid to low- and medium-skill workers, for the latter on both low- and medium-skill jobs.