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Over 60% of participants accepted low piece rates (10 MWK/unit, yielding ~70 MWK daily earnings plus 50 MWK participation fee). Ex-post refusal rates were under 3% and declined over time, confirming that workers learned and adhered to truthful wage revelation.
Mandatory participation eliminates non-market leisure time value ($h = 0.013$, equivalent to ~2% of UI benefit levels or >1% of worker productivity), disciplining worker outside options and lowering equilibrium wages by 0.03%, which encourages firms to expand overall vacancy postings by 2.4%.
High-school educated jobseekers doubled their permanent employment rate from 5.8% to 11.6% (ITT = +5.76 percentage points, p < 0.05) and increased formal employment by 45% (+4.82 percentage points, p < 0.10), driven by an 8.7% reduction in reservation wages (p < 0.10); post-secondary jobseekers showed no statistically significant change in permanent employment (-2.6 percentage points, p > 0.10) or reservation wages (-3.5%, p > 0.10).
Short-term work experience produced a statistically non-significant effect on monthly reservation wages (IV estimate = +$124.40, p > 0.10) and no significant increase in active job search duration (IV estimate = +0.089, p > 0.10), ruling out reservation wage shifts as the mechanism driving daily wage returns.