<mark>in government-driven ALMPs, which is not the case for OJT, where high skills beget more skills.</mark><sup>8</sup> <mark>(2) Training systems vary across and sometimes even within countries. Therefore, it is difficult to successfully isolate, or even compare, system-level effects (local institutions, informality, and public spending on training). For instance, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries have extensive experience with ALMPs, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and OJT. Developing economies have much less experience with these programs.</mark> <mark>(3) Program quality could vary widely between ALMPs and OJTs: there are master-trainers within firms, access to the latest machines and equipment, and concrete opportunities to utilize the new skills. The fact that a firm is conducting OJT could also imply less asymmetry of information between the needs of the firms and the training output.</mark> <mark>However, in an indirect way, by looking at the evolution of the content and setting of training used in ALMPs—a widely studied area in social protection—we can arrive at some sense of what training approaches work better. ALMPs use a mix of approaches, including in-classroom training programs; workplace training; the interaction of the previous two types; and in-classroom and workplace training— plus supplementary services, such as counseling and mentoring, monitoring, job search and placement assistance, and soft and life skills training.</mark> <mark>A comprehensive meta-assessment of training programs from 90 countries found some patterns of transition from in-classroom only training toward combined measures of in-classroom, workplace training, and other supplementary services (Fares and Puerto 2009). The meta-analysis of 345 studies of training programs indicated that programs that combine different training approaches in ALMPs have a higher probability of positive labor market impacts on employment. In particular, the combination of in-classroom and workplace training increases the likelihood of positive labor market impacts by 30 percentage points over in-classroom training only. When this interaction is combined with other services, the probability of a positive impact increases by 53 percentage points.</mark> <mark>In another relevant study, Betcherman, Dar and Olivas (2004) take an instructive approach about not viewing ALMPs as a panacea to youth unemployment, given the modest returns to these. They emphasize the following as good features to consider: a comprehensive package of services, programs oriented to demand and linked to workplaces; careful targeting; and early engagement of employers in training design. Both studies lament the lack of rigorous impact evaluations and cost-benefit analyses as a missing piece of the puzzle—and an area for future research.</mark> The following subsections focus on reviewing the literature on OJT (given the high returns), to examine wages for workers, productivity for firms, costs of provision, and common measurement challenges (that the more rigorous studies analyzed here have managed to address).

> 8 ALMPs are typically government programs that intervene in the labor market to help the unemployed find work. Many of these programs grew out of earlier public works projects designed to combat widespread unemployment in the developed world during the inter-war period. ALMPs include: (i) public employment services, such as job centers, help for the unemployed in their job search effort by disseminating information on vacancies, as well as by providing assistance with upgrading interview skills; (ii) training schemes, such as classes and apprenticeships, help the unemployed improve their skills and increase their employability prospects; and (iii) employment subsidies, in the public or private sector, directly create jobs for the unemployed. These are typically short-term measures designed to enable the unemployed to build work experience and prevent skill atrophy.

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