The search for good jobs: Evidence from a six-year field experiment in Uganda
This journal article, published by the Journal of Labor Economics, examines labor market interventions in Uganda. See the abstract below for details.
Authors
Vittorio Bassi
Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Southern California
Robin Burgess
Director, IGC and Professor of Economics, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
Imran Rasul
Professor of Economics, University College London
Munshi Sulaiman
Director of Research, Brac Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD)
Anna Vitali
Assistant Professor, New York UniversityAbstract: There are 420 million young people in Africa today, and only one in three has a regular salaried job. We study how two common labor market interventions—vocational training and matching—affect the job search behavior of young workers. We do so by means of a field experiment tracking young job seekers for 6 years in Uganda’s main cities. Vocational training amplifies the job seekers’ initial optimism, leading them to search more intensively and toward high-quality firms. Adding matching has the opposite effect, plausibly because of low callback rates. These differences affect labor market outcomes in the long run.