Decades of civil conflict in Colombia have internally displaced more than eight million people, the second largest displacement crisis in the world. Conflict has known ramifications for education and employment prospects and, moreover, there is a powerful yet understudied way in which conflict can have long-lasting labour market effects: through beliefs about the self, the world and the future. Biased beliefs undermine the ability to make forward-looking decisions, adopt effective business practices and risky ideas when entrepreneurs should instead exhibit self-confidence, experiment rapidly and learn from failure. Failing to account for psychology may explain why the multi-million-dollar skills training industry has had limited impact on the productivity and profits of microenterprises, particularly in fragile or post-conflict settings.
The research team is currently co-generating a novel entrepreneurship training curriculum with the Mayor of Bogotá. Drawing on numerous interviews and focus group discussions conducted with the target population, the curriculum overlays entrepreneurship soft skills with imagery techniques and basic principles of cognitive behavioural therapy for victims of conflict and other populations who have experienced trauma. These techniques build the capacity to think about the future and make complex decisions. The training has already been partially piloted with a small group of entrepreneurs. To evaluate the curriculum’s effectiveness, the team will conduct a large-scale randomised controlled trial with approximately 2000 micro and small entrepreneurs in Bogotá. If the project proves effective, the team will transfer the knowledge and curriculum to local stakeholders, creating opportunities for the scale up of the intervention.
Professor Nava Ashraf
Nava Ashraf is Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She was previously an Assistant Professor in the Negotiations, Organizations, and Markets Unit at Harvard Business School. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 2005, and her BA in Economics and International Relations from Stanford University. Her research combines psychology and economics, using both lab and field experiments to test insights from behavioural economics in the context of development projects in the Philippines, Kenya and Zambia. Her experiments address behaviour change in health, agricultural production, and microfinance. She has conducted research on questions of intra-household conflict and bargaining in decisions related to finance and fertility, with a special focus on women’s empowerment. Her research is published or forthcoming in leading journals including the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Journal of Economic Perspectives. She is a Faculty Affiliate of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT, dedicated to the use of randomized trials as a tool for learning what works in international development, and a Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Prior to joining Harvard, she worked at the World Bank on trade negotiations between Morocco and the European Union, as a consultant for several nonprofit organizations in developing countries, and as founder of a business skills training institute for women in West Africa. She has been awarded a Queen’s Jubilee Medal for service by the Government of Canada.
Dr Gharad Bryan
Bryan is a Lecturer in Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an Associate of the STICERD Economic Organisation and Public Policy programme. His research interests include development economics, behavioural economics, and experimental economics.
Professor Emily Holmes
Holmes is currently a Visiting Professor in Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford and worked here between 2005-2012. She is now Professor at the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden.
Holmes is a Clinical Psychologist with a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience. Her overarching research interest is investigating mental imagery and emotion in psychopathology for cognitive therapies. She set up the Experimental Psychopathology and Cognitive Therapies Research Group (EPaCT). The EPaCT team aim to use experimental psychology techniques to increase our understanding of the mechanisms underlying psychological disorders. Cognitive psychology is a rapidly developing science with rigorous techniques to investigate mental processes. Her projects aim to test recent theory, which will in turn deliver information to drive future cognitive therapies (e.g. "CBT") innovations informed by basic science.
Dr Leonardo Iacovone
After having joined the World Bank as Young Professional in 2008, Leonardo has worked in the Development Research Group and in the Financial and Private Sector Development Unit of the Africa Region. Currently Leonardo is a Senior Economist with the Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship Global Practice. Before joining the World Bank Leonardo worked as a consultant in Latin America and Southern Africa for UNDP, WTO, UNIDO, USAID and EU. Additionally, before his PhD, Leonardo worked for more than two years in Mozambique as advisor to the Government where he served as economic advisor for the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development advising the director of the Unit for Development of Private Sector and Commercial Agriculture on agricultural trade negotiations, SPS/TBT, and agribusiness strategies to attract investments.
Alexia Delfino
Delfino is a PhD candidate in Economics at the London School of Economics. Before coming to London, she studied Economics at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa. Her research focuses on organizations, entrepreneurship and development.
Ashley Pople
People is a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Oxford as a South African Rhodes Scholar. Her research interests sit at the intersection of development and behavioural economics with a particular focus on belief updating, narratives, entrepreneurship and the future of work. She holds a BCom in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (Honours in Economics) from the University of Cape Town and a MSc in Economics for Development from the University of Oxford.
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Pilot 1 - This consisted of collecting qualitative data on entrepreneurship through interviews with marginalised entrepreneurs and victims of conflict, their business trainers, local psychologists and policymakers for over six months. Research Teams designed a novel curriculum targeting precise behaviors that are limiting the entrepreneurs’ ability to learn (November 2018).
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Pilot 2 - Working with the Bogotá’s Major’s Office to implement the second pilot, the Major’s Office fully engaged with the project and provided both financial and logistical support to the project’s implementation. The pilot helped create a manual for trainers which included best practices, precise ideal take-aways for participants for each session, and FAQ's to guide trainers through questions related to the intervention (May/June 2019).
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Large scale study - Using the findings generated from our pilots to conduct a large-scale study in conjunction with the mayor’s office, this study was conducted in two waves, largely to ease capacity constraints on the local government with which we are partnering to implement this study. Additionally, conducting the experiment in two rounds allowed the team to learn from logistical challenges and plan accordingly to overcome them moving forward.
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Next steps - the Research Team plans to continue with the evaluation of the interventions with victims of conflict. They will attempt to pursue scale-up strategies to allow a policy to dissipate to those who could benefit from it across Colombia as well as other post-conflict settings. The Research Team will also provide a foundation for successful rehabilitation programmes that encourage independence and income generation for victims of conflict in Colombia and across the world.