Overall these results are therefore consistent with at best modest increases in employment translating into modest increases in current household wealth and subjective well-being, with no impacts on expectations about the future.<sup>16</sup> This accords with our finding from the administrative data that any (formal) employment impacts are not long-lasting.

# **5.5 How do these results compare to the expectations of participants and policy makers?**

To address the issue of whether these impacts are in line with the expectations of both the individuals applying for ISKUR training courses and the policymakers in charge of these courses, we conducted an expectations elicitation exercise (Groh et al, 2012). Our baseline survey elicited subjective probabilistic expectations (Delavande et al, 2010) by asking participants what they thought was the percent chance they would be employed in one year if they were selected for ISKUR training, and if they were not. A sample of 51 ISKUR employees from across the different provinces were also asked a range question about the likelihood the control group would be employed, along with a question eliciting the percent difference in employment rates they would expect from training.

Table 8 reports the results. The first two columns show that on average individuals were reasonably close in terms of their expectations of what employment levels would be like in the absence of training: the mean response was for a 31 percent chance of being employed, and in practice 36 percent of the control group is employed. Males aged 25 and over seem to underestimate their higher likelihood of being employed than the other groups, while older females do have lower expectations of being employed to match their lower realized levels.

In contrast to these relatively accurate expectations of the likelihoods of being employed without training, individuals dramatically overestimate the benefits from training: our LATE estimate is for a 2 percentage point increase in employment as a result of training, whereas the mean expected increase among those assigned to the treatment group is for a 32.4 percentage point increase.<sup>17</sup> This overestimation occurs for all gender and age groups. Moreover, ISKUR

> 16 Our pre-analysis plan also hypothesized that training may further impact on social outcomes such as whether individuals head their own household, their decision-making power, and their attitudes towards women’s role in society. We find no significant effects on any of these measures, which is consistent with the lack of strong labor market impacts (results available upon request).

> 17 We report these expectations for the treatment group, to offset any concerns that individuals in the control group who had found out they were not selected for training by the time of the interview might understate their expectations of the value of training. In practice, however, the control and treatment group have very similar expectations, suggesting this is not a factor: the mean treatment gain expected by the control group is 31.9 percentage points, which is similar in magnitude to the 32.4 percentage point gain expected by the treatment group.

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