IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/120080.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The search for good jobs: evidence from a six-year field experiment in Uganda

Author

Listed:
  • Bandiera, Oriana
  • Bassi, Vittorio
  • Burgess, Robin
  • Rasul, Imran
  • Sulaiman, Munshi
  • Vitali, Anna

Abstract

There are 420 million young people in Africa today, and only one in three has a regular salaried job. We study how two common labor market interventions—vocational training and matching—affect the job search behavior of young workers. We do so by means of a field experiment tracking young job seekers for 6 years in Uganda’s main cities. Vocational training amplifies the job seekers’ initial optimism, leading them to search more intensively and toward high-quality firms. Adding matching has the opposite effect, plausibly because of low callback rates. These differences affect labor market outcomes in the long run.

Suggested Citation

  • Bandiera, Oriana & Bassi, Vittorio & Burgess, Robin & Rasul, Imran & Sulaiman, Munshi & Vitali, Anna, 2025. "The search for good jobs: evidence from a six-year field experiment in Uganda," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 120080, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:120080
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/120080/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    --->

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chakravorty, Bhaskar & Arulampalam, Wiji & Bhatiya, Apurav Yash & Imbert, Clément & Rathelot, Roland, 2024. "Can information about jobs improve the effectiveness of vocational training? Experimental evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    2. Kiss, Andrea & Garlick, Robert & Orkin, Kate & Hensel, Lukas, 2023. "Jobseekers' Beliefs about Comparative Advantage and (Mis)Directed Search," IZA Discussion Papers 16522, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Kelley, Erin M. & Ksoll, Christopher & Magruder, Jeremy, 2024. "How do digital platforms affect employment and job search? Evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    4. Bernd Beber & Tabea Lakemann & Regina Schnars & Jann Lay, 2025. "Employment Effects of Skills Trainings in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Systematic Review of Recent Randomized Controlled Trials," De Economist, Springer, vol. 173(1), pages 87-120, March.
    5. Frohnweiler, Sarah & Adongo, Charles A. & Beber, Bernd & Lakemann, Tabea & Priebe, Jan & Lay, Jann, 2024. "Effects of skills training on employment and livelihood outcomes: A randomized controlled trial with young women in Ghana," Ruhr Economic Papers 1095, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    6. Federica Meluzzi, 2024. "The College Melting Pot: Peers, Culture and Women's Job Search," Papers 2409.20225, arXiv.org.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:120080. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.