Building Economic Resilience through Vocational Training: Evidence from a 10-year Field Experiment in Uganda
Organized by the Private Sector Development Research Network
Friday, 24th of February 2023 from 9-10am EST
ABOUT THE SEMINAR
Youth unemployment and underemployment are key policy challenges in developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where 60% of the population is below the age of 25. These challenges have become even more pressing since the macroeconomic downturn caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. This event’s presentation highlights a project which seeks to provide new evidence on the effectiveness of active labor market policies in improving youth labor market outcomes in developing countries and in building economic resilience to shocks, by evaluating the long-term impacts of an intervention targeted to unemployed youth in Uganda. The intervention was implemented by the NGO BRAC in 2013 following a randomized control trial design, and included two components: A vocational training component and a job search assistance component. New rounds of follow-up survey data collected through 2022 allow the researchers to document the long-term impacts of vocational training and job search assistance over a period of steady economic growth pre-pandemic, and how these interventions affected resilience to the Covid-19 crisis.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Vittorio Bassi
Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California; Lead Academic for IGC Uganda; BREAD, CEPR, J-PAL and CEGA Affiliate
Dr. Vittorio Bassi’s primary research interests are in private sector development and labor markets in low-income countries. He is the Lead Academic for IGC Uganda, which delivers research and policy analysis and options in response to requests from the Government of Uganda. Dr. Bassi has published several articles on youth unemployment, resilience of informal labor markets, productivity in informal firm clusters, and the impact of Covid-19 on Ugandan firms. More details on his publications can be found here. He holds a PhD and MSc in Economics from the University College London and a BSc in Economics and Management from Bocconi University.
Watch full seminar here
Listen to the event audio recording here