IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aerins/v6y2024i1p120-36.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can Financial Incentives to Firms Improve Apprenticeship Training? Experimental Evidence from Ghana

Author

Listed:
  • Gabriel Brown
  • Morgan Hardy
  • Isaac Mbiti
  • Jamie McCasland
  • Isabelle Salcher

Abstract

We use a field experiment to test whether financial incentives can improve the quality of apprenticeship training. Trainers (firm owners) in the treatment group participated in a tournament incentive scheme where they received a payment based on their apprentices' rank-order performance on a skills assessment. Trainers in the control group received a fixed payment based on their apprentices' participation in the assessment. Performance on the assessment was higher in the treatment group. Two years later, treated apprentices scored 0.15σ higher on a low-stakes oral skills test and earned 24 percent more in total earnings, driven by higher self-employment profits.

Suggested Citation

  • Gabriel Brown & Morgan Hardy & Isaac Mbiti & Jamie McCasland & Isabelle Salcher, 2024. "Can Financial Incentives to Firms Improve Apprenticeship Training? Experimental Evidence from Ghana," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 120-136, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aerins:v:6:y:2024:i:1:p:120-36
    DOI: 10.1257/aeri.20220696
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20220696
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E192366V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20220696.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20220696.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/aeri.20220696?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • M53 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Training
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aerins:v:6:y:2024:i:1:p:120-36. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.