We examine a natural experiment in Brazil in which similar students took the same standardized test as either a low-stakes school accountability exam or a high-stakes admission exam for the country's top universities. Using administrative data and a difference-in-differences design, we find that...

This study exploits experimental variation in parent human capital (early-life school-based deworming) and a shock to schooling (extended Covid closures) to estimate how these factors interact in the production of child human capital within a sample of 3,500 Kenyan 3-8 year olds. Parents with...

Matched employee-employer data from the UK are used to investigate the importance of social skills, in particular team-work and communication with co-workers, as a driver of wage growth for workers with lower formal education. We find that in social skills tasks, workers enjoy greater wage...

This study provides a comprehensive systematic review of recent randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate the employment effects of skills training programs in sub-Saharan Africa, a region where such interventions are a key element of development assistance. The review focuses on studies...

Digital technologies are having a profound impact on economies, labour markets and societies. They also have the potential to transform government, by enabling the implementation of more accessible and effective services. To support a shift towards digital government, investment is needed in...

Most workers who will be exposed to artificial intelligence (AI) will not require specialised AI skills (e.g. machine learning, natural language processing, etc.). Even so, AI will change the tasks these workers do, and the skills they require. This report provides first estimates for the effect...

In light of increasingly "smarter" technologies, the future of (human) labour is questioned on a daily basis. A study by Frey and Osborne (2013), one of the most recognised contributions in this domain, estimated that half of the US labour force is highly susceptible to computerisation in the...

Schools are ripe for policy intervention. We demonstrate that a greater prevalence of group discussion used in schools positively affects students' life satisfaction and noncognitive skills but has no impact on test scores, based on a sample from the 2015 PISA which includes more than 35...

What is the effect of robots and tools on employment and inequality? Using natural language processing and an instrumental variable approach, we discover that robots have led to a sizable decrease in the employment and wages of low-skill workers in operational occupations. However, tools -...