The Skills to Pay the Bills: Returns to On-the-job Soft Skills Training

Adhvaryu, Achyuta; Kala, Namrata; Nyshadham, Anant

doi:10.3386/w24313

Cited by 55 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…For example, Blattman and Dercon (2016) randomize job-seekers into industrial jobs in large formal firms in Ethiopia, and find that almost a third of people offered a job quit in the first month, and 77 percent within the first year, and that workers experienced health problems from staying in this work. Similarly, Adhvaryu et al (2016) find female garment workers in India to have very high quit rates, losing almost 80 percent of the workers in their study over two years. These high rates of turnover are not consistent with formal jobs being so valuable and desired that workers never want to leave once they attain such positions.…”

Section: What Do Policymakers Expect Of Such Programs and What Does Rmentioning

confidence: 91%

How Effective Are Active Labor Market Policies in Developing Countries? A Critical Review of Recent Evidence

McKenzie¹

2017

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in How Effective Are Active Labor Market Policies in Developing Countries? A Critical Review of Recent Evidence mArch 2017Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. Jobs are the number one policy concern of policymakers in many countries. The global financial crisis, rising demographic pressures, high unemployment rates, and concerns over automation all make it seem imperative that policymakers employ increasingly more active labor market policies. This paper critically examines recent evaluations of labor market policies that have provided vocational training, wage subsidies, job search assistance, and assistance moving to argue that many active labor market policies are much less effective than policymakers typically assume. Many of these evaluations find no significant impacts on either employment or earnings. One reason is that urban labor markets appear to work reasonably well in many cases, with fewer market failures than is often thought. As a result, there is less of a role for many traditional active labor market policies than is common practice. The review then discusses examples of job creation policies that do seem to offer promise, and concludes with lessons for impact evaluation and policy is this area. JEL Classification:O15, J08, J68

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Section: What Do Policymakers Expect Of Such Programs and What Does Rmentioning

confidence: 91%

How Effective Are Active Labor Market Policies in Developing Countries? A Critical Review of Recent Evidence

McKenzie¹

2017

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“…However, since we mainly focus on only two dimensions of soft skills, we can narrow down the mechanisms explaining the estimated effects of training. In fact, neither De Grip and Sauermann (2011) nor Adhvaryu et al (2018) document the direct impact of training on the targeted skill dimensions. 6 Our paper also speaks to the strand of the literature analyzing spillovers arising from the 3 The experiment analyzed was implemented in an in-house call center of a multinational mobile network operator in the Netherlands.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite the long-standing literature on the impact of training programs, only a handful of studies are closely related to ours. De Grip and Sauermann (2011) and Adhvaryu et al (2018) quantify the impact of on-the-job training on direct measures of productivity, using an experimental design. Both papers do this in the context of a private firm.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Training, Soft Skills and Productivity: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Retail

Prada¹,

Rucci²,

Urzúa³

2019

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“…A related study provides additional evidence that managerial skills are teachable and can be acquired through learning [8]. In particular, it focuses on other general "soft" skills, such as communication, time management, and problem solving.…”

Section: Does Causation Exist? Evidence From Experimental Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%