We provide—to the best of our knowledge—the first empirical study on the political economy of public spending on vocational education. Vocational schools raise human capital among non-academics and give the latter a stronger bargaining position in wage negotiation—thereby supporting the clientele of leftwing parties. At the same time, they provide publicly funded inputs that raise firm productivity—an aim particularly important for conservative parties. We analyze expenditures on vocational schools of 301 West-German counties between 2002 and 2013 using two-way fixed effects and mixed models. We find the counties’ expenditures on vocational schools to decrease in the political power of Social Democrats and increase in the political power of Christian conservatives in the county council. Expenditures are higher in election years. We find no support for the conjecture building on Jensen (2011, Compar. Polit. Stud. 44, 412–435) according to which expenditures on vocational education are higher in regions suffering from deindustrialization. (JEL codes: H75, D72).

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党的意识形态和职业教育支出：来自德国的经验证据

我们尽我们所能提供关于职业教育公共支出的政治经济学的第一个实证研究。职业学校提高了非学术机构的人力资本，并使后者在工资谈判中具有更强的讨价还价地位，从而为左翼政党的客户提供支持。同时，他们提供公共资金来提高公司的生产率，这一目标对保守党尤其重要。我们使用双向固定效应和混合模型分析了2002年至2013年间301个西德县职业学校的支出。我们发现各县用于职业学校的支出减少了社会民主党的政治力量，而增加了县议会中基督教保守派的政治力量。选举年的支出较高。2011年，比较。政客。梭哈。见第44页，第412-435页），根据该报告，在遭受去工业化影响的地区，职业教育的支出较高。（JEL代码：H75，D72）。