|
Field
Abstract
|
Before
Many governments and international institutions are working to create economic opportunities for refugees in prolonged crises. Yet refugees, especially in developing countries, may find it particularly hard to access local job markets. By exploring the Ugandan labor market for refugee and local young job seekers, this project will design and evaluate a program with the aim of reducing the prevalence of labor market discrimination against refugees. In collaboration with a local NGO, this study will provide employment subsidies to hire a refugee or a local job seeker. By studying the effect of exposure and how firms learn about the true productivity of workers, researchers will assess whether the program reduces the extent of discrimination and whether labor market outcomes improve.
|
After
Refugees and asylum seekers often struggle to find jobs in their host countries, even when they have unrestricted right to work. This is especially true in low-income countries, home to the majority of the displaced populations in the world. Firms may be reluctant to hire a refugee due to several reasons. Firms may believe that a refugee has lower productivity or is more costly to screen compared to a local worker. Furthermore, language barriers and other information frictions may affect refugees’ job search behavior and the probability of matching. Does assisting firms in hiring ultimately help refugees workers integrating in the local labor markets? We study the effect of short-term internships and skills certifications on firms’ beliefs and willingness to hire refugee workers. We do so by running an experiment in urban Uganda, one of the largest refugee-host countries in the world and the largest in Africa. By organizing internships we will expose firms to working with a refugee for one week, giving them the chance to learn about the worker’s productivity over time. Moreover, we will test whether the effect of this internship differs depending on whether we inform firms that the candidate acquired a skills certificate from a well-known vocational education institute.
|
|
Field
Trial Start Date
|
Before
November 01, 2020
|
After
October 25, 2021
|
|
Field
Trial End Date
|
Before
October 31, 2021
|
After
April 30, 2022
|
|
Field
Last Published
|
Before
September 17, 2020 08:05 AM
|
After
October 18, 2021 01:31 AM
|
|
Field
Intervention Start Date
|
Before
November 01, 2020
|
After
November 01, 2021
|
|
Field
Intervention End Date
|
Before
October 31, 2021
|
After
November 30, 2021
|
|
Field
Primary Outcomes (End Points)
|
Before
Firms' outcomes (beliefs about refugees' productivity; revenues and profits; hire the refugee the firm has been introduced to). Refugees outcomes (salary; savings; job search behavior; social cohesion)
|
After
Firms' outcomes: willingness to pay for a refugee and a local worker; beliefs about refugees' productivity; employment of the refugee the firm has been introduced to; tasks assigned to worker during the internship and planned tasks prior to start the internship; manager's explicit bias. Refugees outcomes:earnings; employment; quality of jobs; job search behavior (number of application done; money spent in applying to jobs; distance of jobs applied to); social cohesion.
|
|
Field
Experimental Design (Public)
|
Before
Firms will be randomly matched one-to-one with refugee job-seekers. The treatment status of each firm depends on the refugee they are matched to. Refugees are thus in a first step divided into two groups:
1) Certified: these refugees will be tested on practically acquired skills and will be provided with a complete certificate, officially recognized by the government of Uganda.
2) Non-certified: these refugees will be tested on practically acquired skills, but will receive a certificate of participation only.
Firms will be then asked to provide their willingness-to-hire the refugee worker they have been shown to. Conditional on their "WTP" they will be randomly provided with a short-term subsidy to hire the worker for one week. A subset of these firms will not receive any subsidy. We will then compare hiring decisions of firms receiving the subsidy versus the ones of firms not receiving the subsidy.
|
After
Firms will be randomly matched one-to-one with refugee job-seekers. The treatment status of each firm depends on the refugee they are matched to. Refugees are thus in a first step divided into two groups:
1) Certified: these refugees will be tested on practically acquired skills and will be provided with a complete certificate, officially recognized by the government of Uganda. The certificate will be shared after the internship they will do at the firm they got matched with.
2) Late-certified: these refugees will be tested on practically acquired skills, but will receive their certificate at the end of the experiment.
Firms will be then asked to provide their willingness-to-hire the refugee worker they have been shown to. Some firms will get to know that the worker has a certificate of skills, some will not. Conditional on their "WTP" they will be randomly provided with a short-term subsidy to hire the worker for one week. The subsidy will be paid to the workers directly, in form of a reimbursement of travel costs to the firm. A subset of these firms will not receive any subsidy and will not be able to hire the worker. We will then compare hiring decisions of firms receiving the subsidy versus the ones of firms not receiving the subsidy.
|
|
Field
Randomization Unit
|
Before
Individual level (refugees) and firm level
|
After
Individual level
|
|
Field
Planned Number of Observations
|
Before
800 firms and 800 refugees
|
After
800 firms and 527 refugees
|
|
Field
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
|
Before
Firms that are shown a certified worker: 100
Firms that are not shown a certified worker: 300
Firms that are shown a certified worker and receive the subsidy: 100
Firms that are not shown a certified worker and do not receive the subsidy: 300
|
After
Firms that are shown a certified worker with whom they complete a week of work: 200
Firms that complete one week of work with a refugee worker, without knowing about the certificate: 200
Firms that are not shown a certified worker and do not work with the refugee worker: 400
Refugees to receive a certificate early in the experiment, after finishing an internship with one firm: 200
Refugees to finish an internship with one firm, receiving a certificate at the end of the experiment: 200
Refugees in control (to receive the certificate at the end of the experiment): 127
|
|
Field
Power calculation: Minimum Detectable Effect Size for Main Outcomes
|
Before
The sample size of 200 individuals in the certification treatment and 600 in pure control, using willingess-to-hire a refugee as the outcome of interest, was chosen based on a power calculation, which showed that this sample is sufficient to detect effect sizes of 0.11 SD for all treatment vs. pure control firms with 92% power. This sample size will also allow the researchers to detect an increase of 29% in firms deciding to hire a refugee with a power of 80% (and confidence interval of 95%)
|
After
|
|
Field
Keyword(s)
|
Before
Firms And Productivity, Labor, Post Conflict
|
After
Firms And Productivity, Labor, Post Conflict
|
|
Field
Did you obtain IRB approval for this study?
|
Before
No
|
After
Yes
|
|
Field
Secondary Outcomes (End Points)
|
Before
Co-workers' outcomes (beliefs about refugees' productivity)
|
After
Firms' outcomes: revenues and profits; Co-workers' outcomes (beliefs about refugees' productivity).
|
|
Field
Pi as first author
|
Before
No
|
After
Yes
|
|
Field
Building on Existing Work
|
Before
|
After
No
|