Economics Seminar “A Firm of One’s Own: Experimental Evidence on Credit Constraints and Occupational Choice”

Title: A Firm of One’s Own: Experimental Evidence on Credit Constraints and Occupational Choice

Guest Speaker: Pamela Jakiela, Associate Professor of Economics at Williams College, USA

15 December 2021 16:00 – 17:00, Zoom

Abstract:

This study presents results from a randomized evaluation of two labor market interventions targeted to young women aged 18 to 19 years in three of Nairobi’s poorest neighborhoods. One treatment offered participants a bundled intervention designed to simultaneously relieve credit and human capital constraints; a second treatment provided women with an unrestricted cash grant, but no training or other support. Both interventions had economically large and statistically significant impacts on income in the first year after treatment, but these impacts dissipated in the second year after treatment and did not return. However, five years after treatment, women assigned to the bundled franchise treatment are significantly better off than those assigned to the cash grant treatment on a range of subjective measures of wellbeing. The study also shows that participants hold remarkably accurate beliefs about the impacts of the treatments on occupational choice.

Registration link: https://forms.ncl.ac.uk/view.php?id=13217800