Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Dynamics of Regional Labour Markets and Training Programmes: Greek Evidence

2010; University of Lodz Press; Volume: 17; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2478/v10105-010-0005-5

1896-1525

Stavros Rodokanakis,

Social Policy and Reform Studies

All training actions in Greece are co-financed by the EU funds, whereas during the examined time period Attica belonged to the Objective 1 of the EU Structural Funds.The Region of Attica is the largest in Greece in terms of population and the biggest urban centre in the country, Athens, is situated in this region.We work first at regional level, second at the level of Athens Area, and third at the rest of urban, semi-urban and rural level.The main questions to be answered are:1. What are the social and demographic characteristics that increase the chances of someone in the examined population finding a job? 2. How does the participation in training courses affect the chances of finding employment?3. Whether University graduates, in contrast to most of the rest of the EU member states, face greater difficulties in finding a job than the non-University graduates, as a series of studies (see Meghir et al., 1989; OECD, 1990;Iliades, 1995; IN.E./GSEE-ADEDY, 1999;Katsikas, 2005) or statistics (Eurostat, 1995) for Greece conclude.We test the human capital theory, which underpins many of the important developments in modern economics and provides one of the main explanations for wage and salary differentials by age and occupation, and the uneven incidence of unemployment by skill (education and training).We try to research whether the more educated and the more trained a person is, the higher the probability of him finding a job.The importance of this research lies in the fact that, to the author's knowledge, it is the first time that the analysis of investigating the impact of training on the labour market of Attica is based on the micro-data of the Greek LFS.This is because access to the individual anonymised records of the Greek LFS was not allowed to researchers until the summer of 2005, due to the Data Protection Act.The article starts with the issue of over-education and why it is important to this research.Then, we examine the impact of training programmes on the employment prospects of individuals in the EU and the rest of the OECD according to a series of studies; the results are based on both cross-sectional and longitudinal data.We discuss the vocational training policies for the unemployed in Greece.Finally, we refer to the socio-economic characteristics of the examined region and follow a logistic regression for the years 1988 and 1992 -based on micro-data of the Greek LFS -for the region under study.The article concludes with the impact of training on employment probability in Europe and the examined area, and ends with some general comments on the merit and value of this study.