EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Entrepreneurship Training and Self-Employment among University Graduates: Evidence from a Randomized Trial in Tunisia

Patrick Premand, Stefanie Brodmann (), Rita Almeida (), Rebekka Grun () and Mahdi Barouni ()
Additional contact information
Stefanie Brodmann: World Bank
Rebekka Grun: World Bank

No 7079, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In economies characterized by low labor demand and high rates of youth unemployment, entrepreneurship training has the potential to enable youth to gain skills and create their own jobs. This paper presents experimental evidence on a new entrepreneurship track that provides business training and personalized coaching to university students in Tunisia. Undergraduates in the final year of licence appliquée were given the opportunity to graduate with a business plan instead of following the standard curriculum. This paper relies on randomized assignment of the entrepreneurship track to identify impacts on labor market outcomes one year after graduation. The analysis finds that the entrepreneurship track was effective in increasing self-employment among applicants, but that the effects are small in absolute terms. In addition, the employment rate among participants remains unchanged, pointing to a partial substitution from wage employment to self-employment. The evidence shows that the program fostered business skills, expanded networks, and affected a range of behavioral skills. Participation in the entrepreneurship track also heightened graduates' optimism toward the future shortly after the Tunisian revolution.

Keywords: youth employment; self-employment; entrepreneurship training; program evaluation; behavioral skills; soft skills (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J24 L26 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2012-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara, nep-ent and nep-lab
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7079.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Entrepreneurship Education and Entry into Self-Employment Among University Graduates (2016) Downloads
Working Paper: Entrepreneurship training and self-employment among university graduates: evidence from a randomized trial in Tunisia (2012) Downloads
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:iza:izadps:dp7079

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().

 
Page updated 2025-02-11
Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7079