Publication: The Impact of Vocational Training for the Unemployed : Experimental Evidence from Turkey
Loading...
Date
2014-03
ISSN
Published
2014-03
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
A randomized experiment is used to evaluate a large-scale, active labor market policy: Turkey's vocational training programs for the unemployed. A detailed follow-up survey of a large sample with low attrition enables precise estimation of treatment impacts and their heterogeneity. The average impact of training on employment is positive, but close to zero and statistically insignificant, which is much lower than either program officials or applicants expected. Over the first year after training, the paper finds that training had statistically significant effects on the quality of employment and that the positive impacts are stronger when training is offered by private providers. However, longer-term administrative data show that after three years these effects have also dissipated.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Hirshleifer, Sarojini; McKenzie, David; Almeida, Rita; Ridao-Cano, Cristobal. 2014. The Impact of Vocational Training for the Unemployed : Experimental Evidence from Turkey. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 6807. © http://hdl.handle.net/10986/17730 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication Global Poverty Revisited Using 2021 PPPs and New Data on Consumption(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-05)Recent improvements in survey methodologies have increased measured consumption in many low- and lower-middle-income countries that now collect a more comprehensive measure of household consumption. Faced with such methodological changes, countries have frequently revised upward their national poverty lines to make them appropriate for the new measures of consumption. This in turn affects the World Bank’s global poverty lines when they are periodically revised. The international poverty line, which is based on the typical poverty line in low-income countries, increases by around 40 percent to $3.00 when the more recent national poverty lines as well as the 2021 purchasing power parities are incorporated. The net impact of the changes in international prices, the poverty line, and new survey data (including new data for India) is an increase in global extreme poverty by some 125 million people in 2022, and a significant shift of poverty away from South Asia and toward Sub-Saharan Africa. The changes at higher poverty lines, which are more relevant to middle-income countries, are mixed.Publication Geopolitical Fragmentation and Friendshoring(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-26)This paper examines the relationship between geopolitical fragmentation and friendshoring of foreign investments over time, countries, and sectors. The analysis uses comprehensive data on foreign direct investments covering greenfield projects, mergers and acquisitions, and stocks of affiliates, as well as data on four alternative measures of geopolitical distance between countries. The gravity estimations suggest that, first, geopolitical differences have a negative effect on foreign investments and the magnitude has heightened in the post-pandemic period compared to a decade ago. Second, it is primarily the companies from advanced Western economies whose foreign investment decisions are increasingly shaped by friendshoring forces. Finally, the paper shows that friendshoring is not only confined to strategic industries, implying that allocations of foreign direct investments may not solely reflect national security or resilience considerations.Publication Soaring Food Prices Threaten Recent Economic Gains in the EU(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-02)The surge in food prices following the 2021 economic rebound has become a significant concern for households, particularly low-income ones, in Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, and Romania. Food price inflation, which surpasses general inflation rates, risks worsening poverty and food insecurity in these countries. This paper explores the distributional impacts of rising food prices and the effectiveness of government response measures. Low-income households, who allocate a larger share of their income to food, are disproportionately affected and are struggling to cope with unexpected expenses, leading to increased difficulties in accessing proper nutrition. Simulations indicate that rising food prices contribute to higher poverty rates and greater income inequality, especially among vulnerable populations. They also suggest that the main poverty-targeted social assistance schemes offer critical support for the extreme poor, but expanding both coverage and benefits is vital to shield all at-risk individuals. Targeted policies that balance immediate relief with long-term resilience-building are essential to addressing the challenges posed by escalating food prices.Publication Disentangling the Key Economic Channels through Which Infrastructure Affects Jobs(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-04-03)This paper takes stock of the literature on infrastructure and jobs published since the early 2000s, using a conceptual framework to identify the key channels through which different types of infrastructure impact jobs. Where relevant, it highlights the different approaches and findings in the cases of energy, digital, and transport infrastructure. Overall, the literature review provides strong evidence of infrastructure’s positive impact on employment, particularly for women. In the case of electricity, this impact arises from freeing time that would otherwise be spent on household tasks. Similarly, digital infrastructure, particularly mobile phone coverage, has demonstrated positive labor market effects, often driven by private sector investments rather than large public expenditures, which are typically required for other large-scale infrastructure projects. The evidence on structural transformation is also positive, with some notable exceptions, such as studies that find no significant impact on structural transformation in rural India in the cases of electricity and roads. Even with better market connections, remote areas may continue to lack economic opportunities, due to the absence of agglomeration economies and complementary inputs such as human capital. Accordingly, reducing transport costs alone may not be sufficient to drive economic transformation in rural areas. The spatial dimension of transformation is particularly relevant for transport, both internationally—by enhancing trade integration—and within countries, where economic development tends to drive firms and jobs toward urban centers, benefitting from economies scale and network effects. Turning to organizational transformation, evidence on skill bias in developing countries is more mixed than in developed countries and may vary considerably by context. Further research, especially on the possible reasons explaining the differences between developed and developing economies, is needed.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Active Labor Market Programs for Youth : A Framework to Guide Youth Employment Interventions(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-11)Youth are three times more likely to be unemployed than adults, even in economies with strong economic growth. This note is a tool to provide policymakers and youth-serving organizations with a framework to better diagnose short- to medium-run constraints facing the stock of unemployed youth and to design evidence based youth employment interventions. The note only addresses youth employment; strategies to affect wages, productivity, underemployment, or job quality are not directly discussed. This note presents youth-oriented Active Labor Market Programs (ALMPs) that conform to one of two criteria. Each intervention either has been shown to have predominately positive impact, as measured by rigorous impact evaluations, or has weaker evidence of impact-rigorous evaluations with mixed evidence of impact or strong positive monitoring data-and is theoretically sound. Cost-effectiveness information is presented when available. The note focuses on programs that are appropriate to address constraints faced by youth from disadvantaged backgrounds.Publication Turkey : Evaluating the Impact of Iskur's Vocational Training Programs(2013-08)Turkey's economic performance during the 2000s is a global success story; high-income status is now within reach but this will require creating more and better jobs. Upgrading the skills of the current labor force is crucial for creating more and better jobs. The Turkish Employment Agency (ISKUR) plays a leading role in upgrading the skills of jobseekers and facilitating their access to productive employment by providing vocational training and other employment support services. The increasing importance of ISKUR vocational training prompted the government to commission the present study to evaluate its impact and to identify ways to enhance it. The study evaluates the main type of ISKUR's vocational training courses at a particular point in time, and thus it does not take into account recent reforms. The study evaluates a representative sample of general vocational training courses, which account for about two thirds of ISKUR vocational trainees (the other one-third mostly take courses on demand by employers) that took place between December 2010 and June 2011. The evaluation has an experimental design, exploiting the excess demand for ISKUR vocational training courses to randomly assign eligible training applicants into those who receive training (treatment group) and those who do not (control group). The study makes use of the findings from this evaluation, complemented by evidence from other countries, to suggest a number of policy options to further strengthen the impact of ISKUR training and services. In this context, this report is structured as follows: section one gives the context: jobs, skills upgrading, and ISKUR; section two presents evaluation of ISKUR training programs: design, data, and methods; section three presents evaluation of ISKUR training programs: results; and section four gives strengthening the impact of ISKUR training and services.Publication Activating and Increasing Employability of Specific Vulnerable Groups in Bulgaria(Sofia, 2014-05)The Bulgarian labor market has suffered from the economic crisis, and cyclical unemployment has turned into structural unemployment. The labor market crisis is amplified by demographic change as the young and skilled labor force emigrates, aggravating a skills mismatch. Vulnerable groups are served by up to five different agencies, depending on the type of services required: the (1) public employment service; (2) social assistance agency; (3) national security institute; (4) ministry of education; and (5) national and territorial expert medical commissions. Cooperation between the labor offices, the social assistance directorates and municipalities is focused mainly on administrative functions and rule enforcement, rather than on labor market inclusion and promotion. This report reviews the design and implementation of activation policies for social assistance recipients and other highly disadvantaged groups in Bulgaria. The report starts by providing an overview of recent labor market trends, including the impact of the economic crisis on the labor market, in general, and on vulnerable groups, in particular. Chapter two describes and analyses the institutional setting for the design and implementation of Bulgaria's activation strategy and policies, as well as institutional capacity and cooperation between institutions. Chapter three analyses the impact of the benefit system on activation. Chapter four reviews the activation process and the implementation of the mutual obligation principle and the targeting of services provided to disadvantaged groups. Chapter five reviews active labor market programs and investigates to what extent these programs are targeted towards disadvantaged groups, which types of programs are prioritized, as well as reviewing the development of funding for active measures and programs.Publication Entrepreneurship Training and Self-Employment among University Graduates : Evidence from a Randomized Trial In Tunisia(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-12)In economies characterized by low labor demand and high rates of youth unemployment, entrepreneurship training has the potential to enable youth to gain skills and create their own jobs. This paper presents experimental evidence on a new entrepreneurship track that provides business training and personalized coaching to university students in Tunisia. Undergraduates in the final year of licence appliquee were given the opportunity to graduate with a business plan instead of following the standard curriculum. This paper relies on randomized assignment of the entrepreneurship track to identify impacts on labor market outcomes one year after graduation. The analysis finds that the entrepreneurship track was effective in increasing self-employment among applicants, but that the effects are small in absolute terms. In addition, the employment rate among participants remains unchanged, pointing to a partial substitution from wage employment to self-employment. The evidence shows that the program fostered business skills, expanded networks, and affected a range of behavioral skills. Participation in the entrepreneurship track also heightened graduates optimism toward the future shortly after the Tunisian revolution.Publication Investing in Turkey's Next Generation : The School-to-Work Transition and Turkey's Development(Washington, DC, 2008-06)This report assesses the prospects for Turkey's youth by examining the 'school-to-work transition'. Turkey needs to invest in its young people to capture the potentially substantial dividend of today's large youth cohort. Because of the sheer number of young people, Turkey's working-age population will expand by over 800,000 every year during the next decade. This so-called 'productive population' will continue to grow until around 2020 when the demographic window starts to close. By that time, Turkey will have the population profile of an aging society. East Asia's economic miracle of the 1970s and 1980s demonstrated that a large youth cohort can propel an economy to very high growth rates. However, the experience in other regions, such as Latin America, has shown that this outcome is by no means guaranteed. Investments made now in today's children and youth will be critical in determining the extent to which Turkey benefits from this 'demographic dividend' While the potential benefits are great, so are the risks if today's large youth cohort does not find its place in tomorrow's labor market and society. The potential downside of this demographic profile is also significant. If Turkey's young people are not well prepared for the world of work and if the labor market does not generate more and better jobs for them, then this large youth cohort will be the source of social and economic pressures and tensions. Indeed, managing the transition into adulthood will be a very important factor in determining how well Turkey achieves the goals of stability, equity, and competitiveness that are at the heart of the Ninth Development Plan. In many respects, Turkey has taken important steps to prepare for this future. Today's young people are more educated and healthier than previous ones, which is a strong base to build on. Educational achievements have been notable, especially in basic education. Enrollments are up at all levels. Some important steps have been taken to modernize the labor market and to establish the foundations for employment institutions and policies suitable for an open, private-sector led economy.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Breaking the Conflict Trap : Civil War and Development Policy(Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003)Most wars are now civil wars. Even though international wars attract enormous global attention, they have become infrequent and brief. Civil wars usually attract less attention, but they have become increasingly common and typically go on for years. This report argues that civil war is now an important issue for development. War retards development, but conversely, development retards war. This double causation gives rise to virtuous and vicious circles. Where development succeeds, countries become progressively safer from violent conflict, making subsequent development easier. Where development fails, countries are at high risk of becoming caught in a conflict trap in which war wrecks the economy and increases the risk of further war. The global incidence of civil war is high because the international community has done little to avert it. Inertia is rooted in two beliefs: that we can safely 'let them fight it out among themselves' and that 'nothing can be done' because civil war is driven by ancestral ethnic and religious hatreds. The purpose of this report is to challenge these beliefs.Publication Design Thinking for Social Innovation(2010-07)Designers have traditionally focused on enchancing the look and functionality of products.Publication Government Matters III : Governance Indicators for 1996-2002(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-08)The authors present estimates of six dimensions of governance covering 199 countries and territories for four time periods: 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002. These indicators are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance, drawn from 25 separate data sources constructed by 18 different organizations. The authors assign these individual measures of governance to categories capturing key dimensions of governance and use an unobserved components model to construct six aggregate governance indicators in each of the four periods. They present the point estimates of the dimensions of governance as well as the margins of errors for each country for the four periods. The governance indicators reported here are an update and expansion of previous research work on indicators initiated in 1998 (Kaufmann, Kraay, and Zoido-Lobat 1999a,b and 2002). The authors also address various methodological issues, including the interpretation and use of the data given the estimated margins of errors.Publication Governance Matters IV : Governance Indicators for 1996-2004(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-06)The authors present the latest update of their aggregate governance indicators, together with new analysis of several issues related to the use of these measures. The governance indicators measure the following six dimensions of governance: (1) voice and accountability; (2) political instability and violence; (3) government effectiveness; (4) regulatory quality; (5) rule of law, and (6) control of corruption. They cover 209 countries and territories for 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2004. They are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance, drawn from 37 separate data sources constructed by 31 organizations. The authors present estimates of the six dimensions of governance for each period, as well as margins of error capturing the range of likely values for each country. These margins of error are not unique to perceptions-based measures of governance, but are an important feature of all efforts to measure governance, including objective indicators. In fact, the authors give examples of how individual objective measures provide an incomplete picture of even the quite particular dimensions of governance that they are intended to measure. The authors also analyze in detail changes over time in their estimates of governance; provide a framework for assessing the statistical significance of changes in governance; and suggest a simple rule of thumb for identifying statistically significant changes in country governance over time. The ability to identify significant changes in governance over time is much higher for aggregate indicators than for any individual indicator. While the authors find that the quality of governance in a number of countries has changed significantly (in both directions), they also provide evidence suggesting that there are no trends, for better or worse, in global averages of governance. Finally, they interpret the strong observed correlation between income and governance, and argue against recent efforts to apply a discount to governance performance in low-income countries.Publication Governance Matters VIII : Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators 1996–2008(2009-06-01)This paper reports on the 2009 update of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) research project, covering 212 countries and territories and measuring six dimensions of governance between 1996 and 2008: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption. These aggregate indicators are based on hundreds of specific and disaggregated individual variables measuring various dimensions of governance, taken from 35 data sources provided by 33 different organizations. The data reflect the views on governance of public sector, private sector and NGO experts, as well as thousands of citizen and firm survey respondents worldwide. The authors also explicitly report the margins of error accompanying each country estimate. These reflect the inherent difficulties in measuring governance using any kind of data. They find that even after taking margins of error into account, the WGI permit meaningful cross-country comparisons as well as monitoring progress over time. The aggregate indicators, together with the disaggregated underlying indicators, are available at www.govindicators.org.