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Learning Management Through Matching: A Field Experiment Using Mechanism Design

Author

Listed:
  • Girum Abebe
  • Marcel Fafchamps
  • Michael Koelle
  • Simon Quinn
Abstract
What is the effect of exposing motivated youth to firm management in practice? To answer this question, we place young professionals for one month in established firms to shadow middle managers. Using random assignment into program participation, we find positive average effects on wage employment, but no average effect on the likelihood of self-employment. Within the treatment group, we match individuals and firms in batches using a deferred-acceptance algorithm. We show how this allows us to identify heterogeneous treatment effects by firm and intern. We find striking heterogeneity in self-employment effects, but almost no heterogeneity in wage employment. Estimates of marginal treatment effects (MTE) are then used to simulate counterfactual mechanism design. We find that some assignment mechanisms substantially outperform random matching in generating employment and income effects. These results demonstrate the importance of treatment heterogeneity for the design of field experiments and the role of matching algorithms in intervention design.

Suggested Citation

  • Girum Abebe & Marcel Fafchamps & Michael Koelle & Simon Quinn, 2019. "Learning Management Through Matching: A Field Experiment Using Mechanism Design," NBER Working Papers 26035, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26035
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    Cited by:

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    2. Atı̇la Abdulkadı̇roğlu & Joshua D. Angrist & Yusuke Narita & Parag Pathak, 2022. "Breaking Ties: Regression Discontinuity Design Meets Market Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(1), pages 117-151, January.
    3. Emily A. Beam & Stella Quimbo, 2023. "The Impact of Short-Term Employment for Low-Income Youth: Experimental Evidence from the Philippines," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(6), pages 1379-1393, November.
    4. Sohail, Faisal, 2021. "From employee to entrepreneur: Learning, employer size, and spinout dynamics," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

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