Master Craftsman Supervision Opportunity Cost

In Simple Words

A master carpenter gains extra help from an apprentice to sand wood, but must spend two hours every day standing over the apprentice to explain measurements instead of building furniture himself. The extra money made from the apprentice's manual work is offset by the lost sales from the master's lost production time, leaving total shop profit the same.

Research question

Although subsidized dual apprentices increase total physical work output in host firms, providing mandatory daily instruction requires master craftsmen to divert time away from direct revenue-generating production, creating an offsetting opportunity cost that leaves enterprise profits unchanged.

Participants

N = 674 informal micro and small enterprises evaluated across 4 distinct sales/profit measures in Côte d'Ivoire.

Study Design

Enterprise-level pooled OLS regression measuring monthly revenues, profits, and daily hours spent by apprentices under direct master supervision.

Results

Apprentices spent 2.628 hours daily under direct master supervision out of 8.170 total working hours; pooled enterprise sales (-52,922 FCFA, p = 0.25) and enterprise profits (-15,820 FCFA, p = 0.14) showed no statistically significant program impact.

Takeaway

Incorporate master trainer time reallocation and lost billable production hours into net enterprise profit evaluations of workplace training programs.

Read alongside the research

Plain-English glossary

Original explanations, informed by the references below. Examples are illustrations, not data from the studies above. The research text stays unchanged.

Statistically significant

A label used when a result passes a chosen statistical threshold, often p < 0.05. It does not show how large or useful an effect is. A result that is not statistically significant does not prove there is no effect.

ExampleA study reports p = 0.03 against a 0.05 threshold. It passes that test, but the effect could still be too small to matter.

American Statistical Association · Statement on p-values ↗Read more about statistically significant →

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