Major Research Grant Projects

This project will study the effects of actual and threatened skills audits on applicants’ skill reporting decisions, applicants’ skill investment decisions, firms’ hiring decisions, and firm-applicant match quality.

Growth-promoting structural change explains much of Africa's recent growth boom, especially in Ethiopia, Malawi, Senegal and Tanzania. In these countries, however, structural change has not been accompanied by labor productivity growth in the nonagricultural sectors. In fact, the expansion of services and manufacturing has typically been accompanied by low or negative productivity growth in these same sectors.

The Government of Ethiopia has embarked on an ambitious industrialization strategy based on the creation of special economic zones as centers of export-oriented light manufacturing. The flagship industrial park of this strategy is located in the city of Hawassa, in southern Ethiopia. The Hawassa Industrial Park (HIP) is one of ten industrial parks that are currently being planned and built all over Ethiopia.

This project will study one potential explanation behind female owned enterprises showing lower returns than their male counterparts: lack of access to childcare services.