Labour and Entrepreneurship
TIME examines how individuals access economic opportunities through employment, enterprise creation, and skills development. Using rigorous impact evaluation and applied economic research, it studies labour market dynamics, entrepreneurship support programmes, business development, productivity, and barriers to economic participation, with a particular focus on vulnerable and underserved populations across developing and emerging economies.
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Evidence from the Health Sector in Egypt
| Researchers: |
Marc Witte, Selim Gulesci and Ahmed Elsayed |
| Partners: | Giving without Limbs |
| Location: | Egypt |
| Sample: | Young women (aged 18 - 29) in the governorates of Assiut and Sohag in Southern Egypt |
| Timeline: | 2022-2024 |
| Theme: | Gender, Labour |
| Description: | Can female employment be pioneered through training schemes? We partner with a non-governmental organization that trains women to become primary care nurses in Southern Egypt, a context with very low female labour force participation. We investigate the extent to which trainees join the labour market and become employed (direct effect), and whether this affects the attitudes towards female employment and labour market outcomes of their social networks (indirect effect). Based on a clustered randomized control trial, we trace the impacts of these 'pioneer' trainees on their social contacts, with some of these contacts being connected to treated participants and others to the control group individuals. |
Entrepreneurship Support for Refugees
| Researchers: |
Guigonan Serge Adjognon, Chloe Fernandez, Andrea Guariso, Marcus Holmlund, Tara Mitchell and Carol Newman |
| Partners: |
Development Impact Evaluation Department (DIME), World Bank |
| Location: | Niger |
| Sample: |
6,069 individuals from 238 villages across the three regions of Diffa, Tillabery, and Tahoua in Niger |
| Timeline: | 2020-2022 |
| Theme: |
Refugees, host communities, entrepreneurship support |
| Description: |
Conflicts and climate-induced forced displacement put increasing pressure on the Sahel region of Africa, one of the poorest regions in the world. Niger hosts over 300,000 displaced people, placing additional pressures on many of its already fragile regions. Both displaced and host populations are poor, face limited access to basic services, have few opportunities to make a living, and are affected by socioeconomic inequalities. How can already vulnerable societies absorb large numbers of displaced people? Which interventions can work to increasing the resilience of both displaced and host populations in these settings? This study will evaluate the impact of an entrepreneurship support project targeting both displaced and host communities in Niger. The program, financed by the World Bank, will provide cash grants and training to support income-generating activities. |
Childcare and Capital: Evidence from Uganda
| Researchers: |
Kjetil Bjorvatn (NHH), Denise Ferris (BRAC), Selim Gulesci, Arne Nasgowitz (NHH), Vincent Somville (NHH) and Lore Vandewalle (Graduate Institute) |
| Partners: |
BRAC |
| Location: | Uganda |
| Sample: |
1,496 households |
| Timeline: | 2018-2022 |
| Theme: |
Childcare, Female labour supply, Entrepreneurship |
| Description: |
Can providing access to childcare services for three to five years old children (i) improve children’s educational (and health) outcomes, (ii) stimulate the development of female businesses and (iii) improve the effectiveness of mainstream business development interventions, such as business grants? These are the key research questions that we plan to address in this project. To answer these questions, we are collaborating with BRAC in Uganda to conduct a randomized experiment that will provide randomly selected women with: (i) subsidized access to childcare (ii) a business grant (iii) childcare and a business grant together. A fourth group will be kept as control. We track the targeted households over 4 years. |
| Researchers: |
Gaia Narciso, Carol Newman and Finn Tarp |
| Partners: | University of Copenhagen, UNU-WIDER |
| Location: |
Vietnam |
| Sample: |
582 ethnic minority households in the provinces of Lao Cai, Lai Chau, and Dien Bien in Vietnam |
| Timeline: | 2016-2020 |
| Theme: | Role models, ethnic minorities |
| Description: | Both information and role model provision have been shown to be highly effective in stimulating economic activities. But do such approaches work also for communities that are remote from knowledge exchange, new technological ideas, markets, and policy decision making? We present experimental evidence on the impact of a role models intervention that aims to inspire ethnic minority households to start businesses and diversify income sources. The research design enables us to disentangle the extent to which role models could shift behaviour by providing information or inspiration. We find that despite successful implementation of the intervention, which was powered to detect reasonably small effects, and a high level of compliance, the role model intervention did not impact on income, livelihoods, or other welfare outcomes. Our findings cast doubt over the generalizability of role model interventions in inducing behavioural change in contexts where populations are severely marginalized and face a variety of binding constraints. |
| Researchers: |
Karin Mayr-Dorn, Gaia Narciso, Duc Anh Dang and Hien Phan |
| Partners: |
Irish Aid, Fulbright Association |
| Location: |
Vietnam |
| Sample: |
Between 128,000 and 135,000 working-age individuals per quarter from the Vietnam Labour Force Survey (LFS) |
| Timeline: | 2017-2019 |
| Theme: |
Trade Diversion, Trade War |
| Description: | This paper investigates the effects of the U.S.-China trade war on labour market outcomes in a third country, Vietnam. We exploit variation in the extent of U.S. tariff hikes on Chinese imports across industries as well as pre-existing industry employment patterns in Vietnam. We find that Vietnamese individuals and districts that are more exposed to the trade war experience higher employment and wages in the manufacturing sector. This is true in particular for women. Our findings reveal that bilateral trade policy can substantially affect labour markets in third countries. |