Can investments in vocational training, contrary to the existing research literature, actually improve labour market outcomes?
Read "Does Vocational Education Work? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Mongolia" by Erica Field, Leigh Linden, Ofer Malamud, Daniel Rubenson and Shing-Yi Wang here.
Existing economic literature has suggested that vocational training does not improve labour market outcomes for young people in developing countries. And yet, this might not necessarily be the case. In this VoxDev talk, Ofer Malamud discusses an innovative experiment that directly analyses the impact of untargeted, long-term, and formal vocational education in Mongolia. Fascinatingly, the researchers find that admission to vocational schools led to higher levels of employment. This implies that there is more room for positivity about vocational education than previous research has suggested.