Management Traits as Embodied Human Capital: A Randomised Field Experiment in Ethiopia

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. Simulating counterfactual mechanisms to assign interns to firms, we find that some assignment mechanisms substantially outperform random matching in generating employment and income effects. This work is part of the Private Enterprise Development in Low Income Countries (PEDL) programme