IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cgd/wpaper/646.html

A Firm of One’s Own: Experimental Evidence on Credit Constraints and Occupational Choice

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Brudevold-Newman

    (World Bank)

  • Maddalena Honorati

    (World Bank)

  • Gerald Ipapa

    (University of Delaware)

  • Pamela Jakiela

    (Williams College
    BREAD
    Center for Global Development
    IZA)

  • Owen Ozier

    (Williams College
    BREAD
    IZA
    J-PAL)

Abstract

We evaluate two labor market interventions targeting young women in Nairobi, Kenya. The first was a multifaceted program involving vocational training, in-kind transfers of physical capital, and ongoing mentoring. The second was an unrestricted cash grant. Both interventions shift women into self-employment, impacts which persist after six years. Both programs also increase income in the short-term, but those effects disappear over time. Though the two treatments have similar impacts on labor market outcomes, women in the multifaceted program report significantly higher wellbeing six years after treatment relative to both women in the control group and those who received the grants.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Brudevold-Newman & Maddalena Honorati & Gerald Ipapa & Pamela Jakiela & Owen Ozier, 2023. "A Firm of One’s Own: Experimental Evidence on Credit Constraints and Occupational Choice," Working Papers 646, Center for Global Development.
    • Handle: RePEc:cgd:wpaper:646
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cgdev.org/publication/firm-ones-own-experimental-evidence-credit-constraints-and-occupational-choice?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pracht, Wyatt & Ricker-Gilbert, Jacob, 2024. "Can Agricultural Value Chain Programs Help Rural Youth Increase their Income? Short- and Medium-term Evidence from a Randomized Trial in Kenya," IAAE 2024 Conference, August 2-7, 2024, New Delhi, India 344276, International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE).
    2. Sinem Kilic Celik & M. Ayhan Kose & Franziska Ohnsorge, 2020. "Subdued Potential Growth: Sources and Remedies," Koç University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum Working Papers 2009, Koc University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum.
    3. Blattman, Christopher & Dercon, Stefan & Franklin, Simon, 2022. "Impacts of industrial and entrepreneurial jobs on youth: 5-year experimental evidence on factory job offers and cash grants in Ethiopia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    4. McIntosh, Craig & Zeitlin, Andrew, 2022. "Using household grants to benchmark the cost effectiveness of a USAID workforce readiness program," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    5. Stöterau, Jonathan, 2019. "Job training programs for youth in low-income countries," PEGNet Policy Briefs 15/2019, PEGNet - Poverty Reduction, Equity and Growth Network, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    6. Edmonds, Eric & Theoharides, Caroline, 2020. "The short term impact of a productive asset transfer in families with child labor: Experimental evidence from the Philippines," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    7. Bernd Beber & Tabea Lakemann & Regina Schnars & Jann Lay, 2025. "Employment Effects of Skills Trainings in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Systematic Review of Recent Randomized Controlled Trials," De Economist, Springer, vol. 173(1), pages 87-120, March.
    8. Abhijit Banerjee & Paul Niehaus & Tavneet Suri, 2019. "Universal Basic Income in the Developing World," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 11(1), pages 959-983, August.
    9. Craig McIntosh & Andrew Zeitlin, 2021. "Cash versus Kind: Benchmarking a Child Nutrition Program against Unconditional Cash Transfers in Rwanda," Papers 2106.00213, arXiv.org.
    10. Baird, Sarah & McIntosh, Craig & Özler, Berk, 2019. "When the money runs out: Do cash transfers have sustained effects on human capital accumulation?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 169-185.
    11. Lang, Megan Elizabeth & Seither, Julia, 2024. "Building Women's Skills for Economic Inclusion and Resilience," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10980, The World Bank.
    12. Fiala, Nathan & Rose, Julian & Aryemo, Filder & Ankel-Peters, Jörg, 2025. "Timing matters: The (very) long-run impacts of cash grants during a crisis," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    13. Omika Bhalla Saluja & Priyanka Singh & Harit Kumar, 2023. "Barriers and interventions on the way to empower women through financial inclusion: a 2 decades systematic review (2000–2020)," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-14, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • 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:cgd:wpaper:646. 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: Publications Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cgdevus.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.