Tara Vishwanath

Soft skills or hard cash? : the impact of training and wage subsidy programs on female youth employment in Jordan

Throughout the Middle East, unemployment rates of educated youth have been persistently high and female labor force participation, low. This paper studies the impact of a randomized experiment in Jordan designed to assist female community college graduates find employment. One randomly chosen group of graduates was given a voucher that would pay an employer a subsidy equivalent to the minimum wage for up to 6 months if they hired the graduate; a second group was invited to attend 45 hours of employability skills training designed to provide them with the soft skills employers say graduates often lack; a third group was offered both interventions; and the fourth group forms the control group. The analysis finds that the job voucher led to a 40 percentage point increase in employment in the short-run, but that most of this employment is not formal, and that the average effect is much smaller and no longer statistically significant 4 months after the voucher period has ended. The voucher does appear to have persistent impacts outside the capital, where it almost doubles the employment rate of graduates, but this appears likely to largely reflect displacement effects. Soft-skills training has no average impact on employment, although again there is a weakly significant impact outside the capital. The authors elicit the expectations of academics and development professionals to demonstrate that these findings are novel and unexpected. The results suggest that wage subsidies can help increase employment in the short term, but are not a panacea for the problems of high urban female youth unemployment.

Leveraging land to enable urban transformation : lessons from global experience

Around the world, in both developed and developing countries, policy makers use a variety of tools to manage and accommodate urban growth and redevelopment. Government officials have three main concerns in terms of land policy: (i) accommodating urban expansion, (ii) providing infrastructure, and (iii) managing density. Together, the planning for infrastructure and urban expansion, land use, and density policies combine to shape the spatial structure of cities. This paper reviews global experience on using land based instruments to accommodate urban development and financing infrastructure. The review suggests that urban transformation is most efficient when land markets are fluid, particularly when they are grounded in strong institutions that (i) assign and protect property rights, (ii) enable independent valuation and public dissemination of land values across uses, and (iii) enable the judicial system to handle disputes that may arise in the process.

Do Wage Subsidies Provide a Stepping-Stone to Employment for Recent College Graduates? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Jordan

This study examines the impact of a randomized experiment in Jordan in which female community college graduates were assigned to receive a wage subsidy voucher. The wage voucher led to a 38 percentage point increase in employment in the short run, but the average effect is much smaller and no longer statistically significant after the voucher period has expired. The extra job experience gained as a result of the wage subsidy does not provide a stepping-stone to new jobs for these recent graduates, which appears to be due to productivity levels not rising above a binding minimum wage.

Testing the Importance of Search Frictions, Matching, and Reservation Prestige Through Randomized Experiments in Jordan

Unemployment rates for tertiary-educated youth in Jordan are high, as is the duration of unemployment. Two randomized experiments in Jordan were used to test different theories that may explain this phenomenon. The first experiment tested the role of search and matching frictions by providing firms and job candidates with an intensive screening and matching service based on educational backgrounds and psychometric assessments. Although more than 1,000 matches were made, youth rejected the opportunity to even have an interview in 28 percent of cases, and when a job offer was received, they rejected this offer or quickly quit the job 83 percent of the time. A second experiment built on the first by examining the willingness of educated, unemployed youth to apply for jobs of varying levels of prestige. Youth applied to only a small proportion of the job openings they were told about, with application rates higher for higher prestige jobs than lower prestige jobs. Youth failed to show up for the majority of interviews scheduled for low prestige jobs. The results suggest that reservation prestige is an important factor underlying the unemployment of educated Jordanian youth.

After the Microfinance Crisis : Assessing the Role of Government-Led Microcredit Alternatives

In light of the recent microfinance crisis in South India, government-run institutions in general, and primary agricultural credit cooperatives in particular, may end up playing a larger role in the provision of financial services for the poor. Using survey data collected in 2007 from three districts in Andhra Pradesh, this paper assesses the performance of 72 primary agricultural credit cooperatives and finds lack of training among the management. In addition, primary agricultural credit cooperatives tend to be used as political instruments and, as a result, borrowers prioritize all debt obligations (microfinance institutions, informal lenders, etc.) before repaying their primary agricultural credit cooperative loans. The authors suggest that if the performance of primary agricultural credit cooperatives does not improve, a larger government role in the supply of credit may undermine the culture of repayment.

Constructing robust poverty trends in the Islamic Republic of Iran : 2008-14

This paper constructs and tests the robustness of consistently measured poverty trends in the Islamic Republic of Iran after 2008, using international poverty lines based on U.S. dollars at 2011 purchasing power parity. The constructed estimates reveal three distinct periods of welfare in the Islamic Republic of Iran: increase in poverty and inequality between 2008 and 2009, decline in poverty and inequality between 2009 and 2012, and gradual deterioration of both indicators again after 2012. The results are robust regardless of the choice of welfare aggregate, inclusion or exclusion of different components, and spatial adjustment accounting for regional variation in food and housing prices.