In 2008, Uganda granted hundreds of small groups $400/person to help members start individual skilled trades. Four years on, an experimental evaluation found grants raised earnings by 38% (Blattman, Fiala, Martinez 2014). We return after 9 years to find these start-up grants acted more as a...

Reducing the gender gap in education is a primary goal for many countries. Two major challenges for many girls are the distance to school and their safety when commuting to school. In Zambia, we studied the impact of providing a bicycle to a school-going girl who lives more than 3 km from the...

Reanalyses of empirical studies and replications in new contexts are important for scientific progress. Journals in economics increasingly require authors to provide data and code alongside published papers, but how much does the economics profession indeed replicate? This paper summarizes...

Programs to actively support young people's employment prospects have existed for decades in industrialized countries; however, they are relatively new in developing nations. In a broad sense, youth livelihood interventions support young people's means to earn a living, and include training,...

Policies that change economic and social outcomes for citizens may not always lead to support for the political party that introduced the policy. In 2008, under the Youth Opportunities Program, the Ugandan government encouraged groups of young people to submit proposals to start enterprises....

Can cash transfers promote employment and reduce poverty in rural Africa? Will lower youth unemployment and poverty reduce the risk of social instability? The authors experimentally evaluate one of Uganda's largest development programs, which provided thousands of young people nearly...

A Ugandan government program allowed groups of young people to submit proposals to start skilled enterprises. Among 535 eligible proposals, the government randomly selected 265 to receive grants of nearly $400 per person. Blattman et al. (2014) showed that, after four years, the program raised...

Can cash transfers promote employment and reduce poverty in rural Africa? Will lower youth unemployment and poverty reduce the risk of social instability? The authors experimentally evaluate one of Uganda's largest development programs, which provided thousands of young people nearly...