ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some of the findings of recent research into the financing of training in member states of the European Community. It focuses on experience with different kinds of instruments for intervening in what would otherwise be a market-financed process. There is a strong interest among member states in each other's experience with different kinds of intervention instruments, whether legislative, regulatory or financial. Financial instruments are those devices and mechanisms, such as market prices, collective funds or training taxes, which are used to raise, allocate or spend training funds. Interventions either bend or replace market financing of training. They can be located along a spectrum of four financing modes, the market-reliant, the market-regulating, the market-supplementing and the market-displacing. Research into the financing of training provides many instances of apparent shifts in the balance of fund-raising between public borrowing, general and hypothecated taxation and direct spending from the cash flow of enterprises and households.
