Does Skill Certification Improve Labor Market Outcomes for Vulnerable Workers? Experimental Evidence from a Public Labor Skill Certification Program in Peru

Last registered on June 14, 2022

Pre-Trial

General Information

Title

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0008151

Initial registration date

February 16, 2022

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

February 17, 2022, 5:27 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated

June 14, 2022, 7:46 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country

Peru

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Jesus Marcano

Affiliation

CAF-development bank of Latin America

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Stanislao Maldonado

PI Affiliation

Universidad del Rosario

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Lesbia Maris

PI Affiliation

CAF-development bank of Latin America

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

On going

Start date

2019-06-01

End date

2022-09-30

Keywords

Labor

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

O15, J24, J44

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

This study aims to estimate the causal effects of a public skill certification program on employment and wages of vulnerable workers in Peru. Considering the existence of low levels of employment and wages in poor and low skilled population, due to the presence of information costs on market participants, adverse selection situations on the side of workers and employers, and collective action problems in employment and wage decisions, the Peruvian Ministry of Labor and Employment Promotion (MTPE) has launched the National Program for the Promotion of Labor Opportunities "Impulsa Perú," a skill certification program to promote the achievement of quality jobs in highly vulnerable segments of the Peruvian population. Despite the fact that the program has managed to certify more than 12,000 people since 2011, its effectiveness in achieving the proposed objectives has not been studied. Additionally, it has been identified that these types of programs have not been frequently studied in the literature. Therefore, the evaluation of the causal effects of this program has the potential to shed light on the usefulness of this type of initiatives to promote quality employment in developing countries.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Maldonado, Stanislao, Jesus Marcano and Lesbia Maris. 2022. "Does Skill Certification Improve Labor Market Outcomes for Vulnerable Workers? Experimental Evidence from a Public Labor Skill Certification Program in Peru." AEA RCT Registry. June 14. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.8151-1.1

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Intervention Start Date

2019-08-01

Intervention End Date

2019-11-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Monthly wage and employment status

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

The main outcome is a continuous measure of monthly wage in the formal sector. We will use the inverse hyperbolic sine transformation in the main specifications.

We will also use a dummy variable of whether the individual has worked for a wage in the formal sector in the last month. To explore the type of contract, we will create two dummy variables:
* Whether the individual is working under a long-term contract in the formal sector during the last month.
* Whether the individual is working under a temporary contract in the formal sector during the last month.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

All candidates in the target population were randomly assigned to an experimental condition using a sequential block-randomized design at the city level (Imbens and Rubin 2015; Gerber and Green 2012). In this design, candidates were preselected by CCLs personnel in groups of twenty people and randomized into treatment and control conditions within the group by the research team. This strategy was determined by how the program operates: the program’s recruiters visit firms, syndicates, and related institutions to identify and recruit potential beneficiaries. The research team agreed with the implementing partner to use a sequential oversubscription strategy and recruit at least twice the available slots for the certification process, so half of the candidates can be randomized into the treatment at the group level. This strategy was sequentially implemented in 33 groups of 20 people each.

The research team randomly selected candidates into treatment after stratifying on the firm or institution where candidates were preselected using the re-randomization algorithm by Morgan and Rubin (2012). This algorithm avoids the risk of pre-treatment imbalance for a given set of covariates by allowing treatment re-randomization without affecting the design’s statistical properties. We allowed up to 1,000 re-randomizations and a minimum p-value of 0.3 to accept a given randomization. We chose to stratify in this way because the implementing partner wanted to ensure that all participating firms or organizations had employees or members in the group of beneficiaries.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Randomization done using Stata

Randomization Unit

Individual

Was the treatment clustered?