The Rise of Nonmarket Training Regimes: Germany and Japan Compared

Germany and Japan are distinguished from liberal market economies such as the United States and Britain by strong private-sector investment in worker training. However, the systems for skill formation in Germany and Japan are based on very different principles and sustained by quite different institutional arrangements. This article explores the origins of these two very different training regimes. We trace the divergent outcomes in the two countries back to differences in the treatment by the state of the artisanal sector in the early industrial period, which in turn affected the strategies of firms that depended heavily on skills and also powerfully shaped their relations with emerging unions.