Abstract

This paper uses linked employer-employee data to investigate whether regional employer competition increases the incidence of apprentice poaching. While there is evidence that increased employer competition adversely affects the probability that regional establishment train apprentices (and the number of apprentices), which is supposedly caused by fears of apprentice poaching, no previous study has considered whether industrial agglomeration indeed increases the incidence of poaching. Our study thus contributes to the literature on firms' training behaviour, as well as the literature on agglomeration effects.