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Field
Trial Title
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Before
The Impact of Soft-Skills Training for microentrepreneurs in Jamaica.
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After
The Impact of Soft-Skills Training for entrepreneurs in Jamaica.
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Trial Status
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Before
on_going
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After
completed
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Abstract
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Before
The goal of this project is to estimate the effect of soft-skills training on business outcomes for microentrepreneurs in Jamaica. We conduct an RCT with two treatment groups and a control group, the first treatment group is offered to take a 40-hour course focused only on non-cognitive skills (in particular, on personal initiative and persistence), while the second treatment group is offered to take a 40-hour course combining both soft-skills training (with focus on personal initiative, but not on persistence) and standard business practices.
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After
A randomized control trial with 945 entrepreneurs in Jamaica shows positive short-term impacts of soft-skills training on business outcomes. The effects are concentrated among men, and disappear twelve months after the training. We argue that the main channel is increased adoption of recommended business practices, exclusively observed in the short run. We see persistent effects on an incentivized behavioral measure of perseverance after setbacks, a focus of this training. We compare a course focused only on soft-skills to one that combines soft-skills training with traditional business training. The effects of the combined training are never statistically significant
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Trial End Date
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Before
April 15, 2019
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After
April 11, 2019
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Last Published
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Before
January 28, 2019 09:51 AM
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After
April 11, 2019 10:32 AM
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Intervention (Public)
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Before
We offer two 10-week, 40-hour business training courses.
The first 5 classes of each course focus on soft skills. In particular, on fostering personal initiative, a psychological intervention aimed at making business owners more proactive with respect to new ideas (Frese and Gielnik, 2014). The approach was hands-on with many examples from the local context and exercises related to the entrepreneur’s business.
The second 5 classes differ across treatment arms. In the “soft-skills only” treatment arm, the second part of the course focuses on being persistent (learning from errors, anticipating barriers, dealing with setbacks, maintaining effort). While in the other treatment arm, the additional five classes cover material that is usually included in traditional business training courses (strategic management, stocking, financial management, record keeping, costing, customer care and writing a business plan).
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After
We offer two 10-week, 40-hour business training courses.
The first 5 classes of each course focus on soft skills. In particular, on fostering personal initiative, a psychological intervention aimed at making business owners more proactive with respect to new ideas (Frese and Gielnik, 2014). The approach was hands-on with many examples from the local context and exercises related to the entrepreneur’s business.
The second 5 classes differ across treatment arms. In the “soft-skills” treatment arm, the second part of the course focuses on being persistent (learning from errors, anticipating barriers, dealing with setbacks, maintaining effort). While in the other treatment arm ("combined training"), the additional five classes cover material that is usually included in traditional business training courses (strategic management, stocking, financial management, record keeping, costing, customer care and writing a business plan).
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Primary Outcomes (Explanation)
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Before
We will account for multiple hypothesis testing by adjusting the p-values using the “sharpened q-value approach” (Anderson, 2008). Moreover, for each table, we will also create indexes for each family of outcomes (Kling et al., 2007).
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After
We account for multiple hypothesis testing by using the procedure described in List et al 2016. Moreover, for each table, we create indexes for each family of outcomes (Kling et al., 2007).
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Randomization Method
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Before
Randomization privately done by a computer, using STATA.
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After
Randomization privately done by a computer, using Stata.
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Additional Keyword(s)
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Before
Entrepreneurship, Business Training, Soft-skills
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After
Entrepreneurship, Business Training, Soft skills
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Field
Pi as first author
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Before
No
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After
Yes
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