BackgroundPoliticians frequently emphasize the importance of Mittelstand firms for the economy, thereby particularly referring to their enormous engagement in training apprentices. This view is especially prevailing in Germany, leading to political promotion of Mittelstand firms on the regional and the national level. However, due to data availability, there is yet almost no empirical evidence on the question whether Mittelstand firms are in fact excessively active in training apprentices. This paper aims at filling this gap in the empirical literature by using a firm dataset from Creditreform.MethodsCombining information from Creditreform with regional data of West German counties, we study whether the relative importance of owner-managed small and medium sized enterprises has an effect on firms’ apprenticeship activity.Results and ConclusionsWe thereby find a significantly positive relation between the relative importance of Mittelstand firms and apprenticeship activity on the regional level. However, on the national level an increase in the share of Mittelstand firms turns out to be without effect on apprenticeship activity.

中文翻译：

---

业主管理的中小型企业和区域学徒活动的重要性：来自德国Mittelstand的证据

背景技术政治家经常强调Mittelstand公司对经济的重要性，因此特别是指他们大量参与培训学徒。这种观点在德国尤为盛行，导致在地区和国家层面对Mittelstand公司进行政治推广。但是，由于数据的可用性，关于Mittelstand公司实际上在培训学徒方面是否过于活跃的问题，几乎没有经验证据。本文旨在通过使用Creditreform的牢固数据集填补经验文献中的空白。方法将Creditreform的信息与西德县的区域数据相结合，我们研究所有者管理的中小企业的相对重要性是否对企业的学徒活动。结果与结论因此，我们发现Mittelstand公司的相对重要性与区域性学徒活动之间存在显着的正相关关系。但是，在全国范围内，Mittelstand公司所占份额的增加对学徒活动没有影响。