Non-RA Sectoral Wage Spillover
RCTReview
When short-term work opportunities are provided by research organizations or international recruiters, post-program wage gains might stem narrowly from continued temporary research assistant (RA) work with similar research firms rather than broad economic integration into the wider economy.
Picture this
If a temporary internship at a research organization only leads to more temporary tasks for that exact same organization, the experience did not open broader economic doors. But if that brief internship helps secure higher-paying positions across completely different industries like administration or retail, the experience provided genuine cross-sector mobility.
What the evidence says
Post-intervention daily wage returns were driven primarily by non-RA positions (IV coefficient = $3.803, p < 0.10 for non-RA wages vs. $3.288 for RA wages; inverse hyperbolic sine log daily wage coefficient = 0.541, p < 0.10 for non-RA vs. 0.044 for RA), demonstrating that wage gains spilled over into general market positions rather than remaining confined to research roles.
- Who was studied
- N = 227 urban male youth job seekers in Lilongwe, Malawi.
- How
- Instrumental Variable (IV) decomposition separating 8-month post-intervention employment and daily wages into Research Assistant (RA) versus Non-RA positions, alongside sample adjustments excluding recruiter employment.
What to do
Disaggregate employment intervention outcomes into program-adjacent versus external non-program sectors to verify true cross-industry labor market mobility.
From the source
"The employment results mirror the earlier findings: we estimate (noisy) positive point estimates of the impact of the experience on employment in RA positions... and non-RA positions. We observe a very interesting pattern for wages... the large wage returns seem to be driven by employment in non-RA positions."
b23e842f-67cd-47d7-9b15-b6b6c8e557a2-Employment Exposure- Employment and Wage Effects in Urban Malawi.pdf