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A growing literature aiming at explaining differences across firms in productivity and access to global export markets has focused on the internal organization of firms. This paper contributes to this literature by evaluating the impact of a program that focuses on enhancing competitiveness of small and medium enterprises in Brazil by providing coaching and consulting on management and production practices. Specifically, the paper tests whether the program induces treated firms to reorganize knowledge by adding more layers of different skills and competencies to their workforces. Using a unique firm-level dataset, the number of layers of the firms are compared before and after the program. The impact of the program is identified by relying on an instrumental variable approach, exploiting the quasi-experiment roll-out of its implementation, which was carried out at different times across Brazilian regions. The analysis finds that the program had an effect and that this effect is heterogeneous. The program is particularly effective in promoting the reorganization of firms with initially fewer layers. The results confirm another finding of the literature, namely that in re-organized firms inequality of wages increases, as firms pay higher wages in added higher layers than in pre-existing ones. Finally, these results are used to discuss how the change in firms' organization is positively correlated with export performance.

Firm Organization --- Impact Evaluation --- Managers

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This paper discusses a randomized control trial to measure the short-term impacts of a skills intervention among urban youth in Sierra Leone at the onset of the Ebola crisis. The intervention provided (i) technical skills training, plus on-the-job training; (ii) business skills training; and (iii) a mix of (i) and (ii). All groups received stipends and literacy and numeracy training. The findings support evidence that combining cash injections and skills training can stimulate employment and entrepreneurship. The program boosted household consumption and investments in housing and assets, thereby building resilience to the Ebola shock. The effects on cognitive and noncognitive skills were positive and heterogeneous. Youth with greater initial ability experienced more positive labor market and entrepreneurship investment impacts. Youth with less initial ability upgraded skills more extensively, although they channeled benefits into more consumption. These findings emphasize the role of basic safety nets and show that noncognitive tests may improve the targeting of skills interventions in fragile contexts. The results also confirm the age-malleability of noncognitive ability and suggest that, in low-ability contexts, the sensitive years for skill investments may reach into early adulthood.

Capital --- Impact Evaluation --- Skills --- Social Protection --- Youth

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Incorporating qualitative methods into the evaluation of development programs has become increasingly popular in recent years, both for the distinctive insights such approaches can bring in their own right and because of their capacity to comple

Impact Evaluation --- Investment Climate --- Mixed Methods --- Regulation --- Triangulation

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Randomized control trials are sometimes used to estimate the aggregate benefit from some policy or program. To address the potential bias from selective take-up, the randomization is used as an instrumental variable for treatment status. Does this (popular) method of impact evaluation help reduce the bias when take-up depends on unobserved gains from take up? Such "essential heterogeneity" is known to invalidate the instrumental variable estimator of mean causal impact, though one still obtains another parameter of interest, namely mean impact amongst those treated. However, if essential heterogeneity is the only problem then the naive (ordinary least squares) estimator also delivers this parameter; there is no gain from using randomization as an instrumental variable. On allowing the heterogeneity to also alter counterfactual outcomes, the instrumental variable estimator may well be more biased for mean impact than the naive estimator. Examples are given for various stylized programs, including a training program that attenuates the gains from higher latent ability, an insurance program that compensates for losses from unobserved risky behavior and a microcredit scheme that attenuates the gains from access to other sources of credit. Practitioners need to think carefully about the likely behavioral responses to social experiments in each context.

Disease Control & Prevention --- Essential heterogeneity --- Impact evaluation --- Instrumental variable estimator --- Poverty Impact Evaluation --- Poverty Monitoring & Analysis --- Public Sector Development --- Randomization --- Science Education --- Scientific Research & Science Parks --- Treatment status

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Mobile Jugendarbeit stellt ein aufsuchendes, lebensweltorientiertes soziales Unterstützungsangebot für eine besonders vulnerable Zielgruppe dar. Die vorliegende Studie zu vier Einrichtungen mobiler Jugendarbeit in Österreich erfasste die hohe Komplexität von Wirkdynamiken und -zusammenhängen in diesem Interventionsfeld durch ein komplexes Forschungsdesign und einen Mix aus fünf methodischen Zugängen. Jeder Forschungszugang zeichnete sich durch spezielle Stärken aus, die sich wechselseitig ergänzten und besonders aussagekräftige Wirkungserkenntnisse ermöglichten. Mobile youth work is a social support service for a particularly vulnerable target group. The present study on four institutions of mobile youth work in Austria captured the high complexity of the dynamics and interrelations of effects in this field of intervention through a complex research design and a mix of five methodological approaches. Each research approach was characterised by special strengths that complemented each other and made particularly meaningful impact findings possible. Bemerkenswert ist insgesamt, wie selbstkritisch die Autor/innen die von ihnen eingesetzten Methoden beschreiben und deren Chancen und Probleme diskutieren. Dadurch ist das Buch auch für andere Forschungen interessant, die in ähnlichen Feldern unterwegs sind und mit ähnlichen Problemen zu arbeiten haben. (socialnet.de, 06.03.2018) Die gesamte Rezension finden sie unter https://www.socialnet.de/rezensionen/22863.php

Research --- Research methods. --- Methodology. --- Forschungsmethoden --- impact evaluation --- Jugendarbeit --- research methods --- social work --- Wirkungsevaluation --- youth work