Researchers evaluated the effect of randomly offering varied wages to bean-sorting workers in rural Malawi. While offering higher wages caused workers to increase their productivity, it did not attract more productive workers.

Youth living in poor urban areas face a number of psychological and social barriers to finding work. In France, over 40 percent of these youth are unemployed, twice as much the national youth unemployment rate. Researchers partnered with the French Public Employment Services to test the effectiveness of a collective job-search program targeting disadvantaged youth. Collective counseling was more effective in helping youth find a stable, full-time job than individual job counseling. The program performed better for jobseekers with higher employment prospects prior to the program, and in groups where participants had similar employment prospects.

Researchers evaluated and compared the impact of two different job search assistance policies on employment outcomes for young job seekers in Addis Ababa. Helping youth signal their skills to employers improved their earnings and job duration four years later, especially for youth who would usually fare the worst in the labor market. Reducing the cost of job search through a transportation subsidy improved the likelihood of having a formal job in the short run, but had no impact after four years.

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to improve the quality of job matches in South Africa. They matched applicants to entry-level vacancies using different types of information: workers’ preferences for job types; communication and socio-emotional skills; or grades and work experience.

Researchers evaluated an accountability workshop program, which educated citizens on the distribution of extractive industry tax revenues and the formal means of local political participation. The program had mixed results on local government quality, increasing the likelihood of initiating recall against poor-performing mayors but also increasing civil unrest. The workshops also reduced involvement in participatory budgeting, as well as reducing mayors’ discretionary spending efforts.

In this study, researchers are partnering with the national electoral authority to test a range of policy interventions designed to ultimately improve poll workers’ attendance during the 2017 state elections.

Researchers are partnering with the Mexico City Labor Court to evaluate whether rotating court notifiers across areas and casefiles can reduce incidences of bribery, increase the notification rates, and improve the functioning of labor courts.