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Harald Pfeifer

BIBB, Germany, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA), Netherlands, and IZA, Germany

IZA World of Labor fills an important gap in the transfer of academic research to policy and practice. It focuses on central labor market issues and allows for a critical discussion suitable for a wider audience

IZA World of Labor role

Author

Current position

Professor of "Economics of Vocational Education and Training," Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA), Maastricht University, Netherlands; Head of Research Unit "Economics of Vocational Education and Training," Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB), Germany

Research interest

Education economics, industrial relations, personnel economics, labor economics

Website

https://roa.nl/h.pfeifer

Positions/functions as a policy advisor

Consultant to the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany

Past positions

Senior Researcher at the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) in Bonn, Germany

Qualifications

PhD, Maastricht University, 2013

Selected publications

  • "Do recruiters select workers with different personality traits for different tasks? A discrete choice experiment." Labour Economics 78 (2022) (with C. Wehner and A. de Grip).

  • "Supply shocks in the market for apprenticeship training." Economics of Education Review 86(1 (2022) (with S. Muehlemann, H. Dietrich, and G. Pfann).

  • "The effect of business cycle expectations on the German apprenticeship market:. Estimating the impact of Covid-19." Empirical Research in Vocational Education and Training 12:8 (2020): 1–30 (with S. Muehlemann and B. Wittek).

  • "The structure of hiring costs in Germany: Evidence from firm-level data." Industrial Relations 55:2 (2016): 193–218 (with S. Muehlemann).

  • "Works councils, collective bargaining, and apprenticeship training – Evidence from German firms." Industrial Relations 53:2 (2014): 199–222 (with B. Kriechel, S. Muehlemann, and M. Schütte).

article(s)

  • Evaluating apprenticeship training programs for firms

    Cost–benefit surveys of employers help design more effective training policies

    Samuel MuehlemannHarald Pfeifer, March 2023
    Apprenticeship training programs typically last several years and require substantial investments by training firms, largely due to the associated labor costs for participants and instructors. Nevertheless, apprentices also add significant value in the workplace. One tool to measure the costs and benefits of training for firms is employer surveys, which were first introduced in the 1970s in Germany. Such cost–benefit surveys (CBS) help to better understand a firm's demand for apprentices and to identify market failures. Therefore, CBS are an important tool for designing effective training policies.
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