Nathan Fiala

Employment Generation in Rural Africa: Mid-Term Results from an Experimental Evaluation of the Youth Opportunities Program in Northern Uganda

This brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study, entitled Employment generation in rural Africa : mid-term results from an experimental evaluation of the youth opportunities program in Northern Uganda, conducted in the year 2008, in Uganda. The study observed that mid-term results after two years suggest four main findings. First, despite a lack of central monitoring and accountability, most youth invest the transfer in vocational skills and tools. Second, the economic impacts of the transfer are large. Third, the evidence suggests that poor access to credit is a major reason youth cannot start these vocations in the absence of aid. Finally, these economic gains result in modest improvements in social stability. The outcomes are split into three themes: Economic, Alienation, and Subjective Well-being. For each theme, the results are summed and presented as a z-score. The economic impacts are large with an increase in .28 standard deviations. The male and female economic impacts are similar. Funding for the study derives from Gender Action Plan, Uganda Social Action Fund, Spanish Impact Evaluation Fund.

Economic Consequences of Forced Displacement

Abstract Over 42 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced from their communities, though little is known about the impact of this movement on livelihoods. I use a panel data set and exploit a geographic discontinuity to explore the effects of displacement in Uganda. I find that displaced households experience a significant initial decrease in consumption. Two years after households returned home, displaced households still lag behind. However, households in the top quartiles of pre-displacement assets have recovered some of their consumption, though with significantly reduced education and wealth levels. There is likely little or no recovery for the poorest households.

Stimulating Microenterprise Growth: Results from a Loans, Grants and Training Experiment in Uganda

Small enterprises may face a number of challenges to growth, including capital constraints, lack of skills and poor self-control. This paper presents the results of a randomized experiment involving microenterprise owners in Uganda designed to explore these constraints. Individuals from a pool of business owners who expressed interest in expanding their enterprises were randomly selected to receive loans, cash grants, business skills training or a combination of these programs. Participants were then followed quarterly to determine the short-run effects on business and household outcomes. I find that six and nine months after the interventions, men with access to loans with training report 54% greater profits. This effect increases slightly over time and is driven by men with higher baseline profits and ability. The loan-only intervention had some initial impact, but this is gone by the nine month follow-up. I find no impacts from the unconditional grant interventions. Markedly, there are no effects for women from any of the interventions. Family pressure on women appears to have significantly negative effects on business investment decisions: married women with family living nearby perform worse than those in the control group in a number of the interventions. Men instead benefit from close family proximity and demand labor from the household. The results suggest that highly motivated and skilled male-owned microenterprises can grow through finance, but the current finance model does not work for female-owned enterprises.

Trusting Former Rebels: An Experimental Approach to Understanding Reintegration after Civil War

The stability of many post-conflict societies rests on the successful reintegration of former soldiers. We examine social capital of former soldiers in Northern Uganda, where the Lords Resistance Army forcibly recruited tens of thousands of youth during a recent brutal conflict. We use a set of interlocked experiments to study behavior of ex-soldiers jointly with the behavior of receiving communities towards this group. Consistent with theories that highlight the importance of cooperation during war, we find that individual cooperativeness robustly increases with the length of time a person was with the LRA, especially among those who were abducted during early age. Furthermore, parents of former-soldiers are aware of the behavioral difference: they trust ex-soldiers more because they expect them to be more trustworthy. Last, we find no evidence of preference-based discrimination, suggesting that anger is attenuated when communities do not attribute responsibility for committed violence to returning soldiers. Together, the results reveal that the impact of child soldiering on social capital, in contrast to human capital, is not necessarily detrimental and, speculatively, may facilitate reintegration.

Do Anti-Poverty Programs Sway Voters? Experimental Evidence from Uganda

A Ugandan government program allowed groups of young people to submit proposals to start skilled enterprises. Among 535 eligible proposals, the government randomly selected 265 to receive grants of nearly

The impact of agri-business skills training in Zimbabwe: an evaluation of the Training for Rural Economic Empowerment (TREE) programme

400 per person. Blattman et al. (2014) showed that, after four years, the program raised employment by 17% and earnings 38%. This paper shows that, rather than rewarding the government in elections, beneficiaries increased opposition party membership, campaigning, and voting. Higher incomes are associated with opposition support, and we hypothesize that financial independence frees the poor to express political preferences publicly, being less reliant on patronage and other political transfers.

Improving Development Effectiveness Through R&D: Dynamic Learning and Evaluation

ABSTRACT This study presents an evaluation of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Training for Rural Economic Empowerment (TREE) programme as implemented in Zimbabwe. The programme’s goal was to improve the labour market outcomes of young people in rural areas. We apply Propensity Score Matching and Difference-in-Differences methods on a two-period retrospective panel data survey (2011 and 2014) to control for biases stemming from observed and unobserved time-invariant characteristics between TREE beneficiaries and a constructed control group. We find that TREE increased beneficiaries’ income by US

Skills in the Marketplace: Individual Characteristics and Bargaining Ability in a Field-Based Experiment

787, as well as child and health expenditures by US

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236 and US

Generating Skilled Self-Employment in Developing Countries: Experimental Evidence from Uganda*

101, respectively, compared to non-beneficiaries over the 2011–2014 programme implementation period.