Skill Certifications and Migrant Labor Market Integration: Experimental Evidence from Colombia

Matías Busso, Carolina González-Velosa, Juan S. Muñoz-Morales, Juanita Ruiz, Juan Diego Valencia Romero and Cynthia van der Werf

No 14806, IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank

Abstract: This paper studies whether government-issued skill certification improves labor market integration when workers skills are hard to verify. We evaluate a randomized offer of access to an occupation-specific certification program in Colombia to locals and migrants, two groups with different ex ante signaling capacity. The program certifies existing skills rather than providing training. Among locals, the offer increases employment by reducing inactivity and raises hours worked. The effects persist unevenly over time and are robust to attrition bounds and alternative outcome measures. Among migrants, estimates are less precise and provide no evidence of effects in employment, hours, or wages. The results show that a common skill certification generates different patterns of labor market adjustment among locals and migrants.

Keywords: signaling; certifications; skills; Migration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 I26 J24 J61 J64 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-10
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english ... ce-from-Colombia.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:idb:brikps:14806

DOI: 10.18235/0014561

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IDB Publications (Working Papers) from Inter-American Development Bank Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Felipe Herrera Library ().