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Abstract
The theory of games, though at first greeted with great expectations by some social scientists, soon became a source of frustrated hopes to many of them. Too much of the theory seemed to be devoted to "zero-sum" and "one-shot" games. But most social contexts are not zero-sum and involve repeated interaction too. There was a certain lack of such game theoretic models which could be successfully adapted to social phenomena as were apt to appear in reality. Recently the theory of games seems to be on its way to closing this gap within a special branch devoted to "repeated games" or "supergames". Very promising is the approach of Michael Taylor which is surveyed and discussed in the subsequent paper. This approach has two main merits: First it can be understood with a modest mathematical background, secondly it can be adapted easily to a more precise reconstruction of classical topics in political theory. Though one might not agree with some of Taylor's conclusions it seems to be worthwhile to get acquainted at least with the basics of his analysis and to take it as a first step to opening avenues for future social research.

Erratum zu: ZAF (2011) 43: 319–325, DOI:10.1007/s12651-011-0064-8. Der obengenannte Beitrag war für das vorliegende Special Issue vorgesehen, wurde jedoch leider versehentlich bereits im letzten Heft von Band 43 publiziert. Der Vollständigkeit halber wird er hier noch einmal in unveränderter Form abgedruckt. Wir bitten dieses Versehen zu entschuldigen. ; The objective of this paper is to analyse the flexibility opportunities of firms to respond to increasing labour market requirements and heterogeneity. Thereby, we focus on two groups of workers and two kinds of management events. The two groups of workers are female and older workers, while continuous training and the use of flexible working contracts (i.e. fixed-term employment, temporary agency work) represent our two kinds of management events. On the basis of large individual- and firm-level data sets we find evidence in line with a gender-biased technological and organisational change in favour of female workers and an age-biased technological and organisational change at the expense of older workers. Furthermore, the use of continuous training, fixed-term contracts and temporary agency workers appears to be beneficial for both labour market participants, i.e. firms and workers. Our results enable firms to respond more effectively to labour markets shortages caused by demographic developments or labour supply changes.

An Erratum to this article was published on 03 June 2011: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12651-011-0085-3 ; The objective of this paper is to analyse the flexibility opportunities of firms to respond to increasing labour market requirements and heterogeneity. Thereby, we focus on two groups of workers and two kinds of management events. The two groups of workers are female and older workers, while continuous training and the use of flexible working contracts (i.e. fixed-term employment, temporary agency work) represent our two kinds of management events. On the basis of large individual- and firm-level data sets we find evidence in line with a gender-biased technological and organisational change in favour of female workers and an age-biased technological and organisational change at the expense of older workers. Furthermore, the use of continuous training, fixed-term contracts and temporary agency workers appears to be beneficial for both labour market participants, i.e. firms and workers. Our results enable firms to respond more effectively to labour markets shortages caused by demographic developments or labour supply changes.

The present paper examines the wage effects of continuous training programs using individual-level data from the German Socio Economic Panel (GSOEP). In order to account for selectivity in training participation we estimate average treatment effects (ATE and ATT) of general and firm-specific continuous training programs using several state-of-the-art propensity score matching (PSM) estimators. Additionally, we also apply a combined matching difference-indifferences (MDiD) estimator to account for unobserved individual characteristics (e.g. motivation, ability). While the estimated ATE and ATT for general training are significant ranging between about 4 and 7.5 %, the corresponding wage effects of firm-specific training are mostly insignificant. Using the more appropriate MDiD estimator, however, we find a more precise and highly significant wage effect of about 5 to 6 %, though only for general training and not for firm-specific training. These results are consistent with standard human capital theory insofar as general training is associated with larger wage increases than firm-specific training. Furthermore, we conclude that firms may intend to use specific training to adjust to new job requirements, while career-relevant changes may be conditioned to general training.