Acquiring skills : market failures, their symptoms and policy responses / edited by Alison L. Booth and Dennis J. Snower.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Introduction: does the free market produce enough skills? / Alison L. Booth and Dennis J. Snower -- 2. Transferable training and poaching externalities / Margaret Stevens -- 3. Credit constraints, investment externalities and growth / Daron Acemoglu -- 4. Education and matching externalities / Kenneth Burdett and Eric Smith -- 5. Dynamic competition for market share and the failure of the market for skilled labour / David Ulph -- 6. The low-skill, bad-job trap / Dennis J. Snower -- 7. Changes in the relative demand for skills / Stephen Machin -- 8. Skill shortages, productivity growth and wage inflation / Jonathan Haskel and Christopher Martin -- 9. Workforce skills, product quality and economic performance / Geoff Mason, Bart van Ark and Karin Wagner -- 10. Workforce skills and export competitiveness / Nicholas Oulton -- 11. Market failure and government failure in skills investment / David Finegold --

12. Training implications of regulation compliance and business cycles / Alan Felstead and Francis Green -- 13. On apprenticeship qualifications and labour mobility / Alison L. Booth and Stephen Satchell -- 14. Evaluating the assumptions that underlie training policy / Ewart Keep and Ken Mayhew -- 15. Conclusions: government policy to promote the acquisition of skills / Dennis J. Snower and Alison L. Booth.