and were now better able to recognize the number and cost of the tools and inputs they needed. However, group comparisons show that group C was the only group experiencing a significantly larger impact in any of the capital outcomes relative to the other treatment groups.

# c. Relative effectiveness of various intervention elements

# _Treatment group comparison_

Many studies of training programs face difficulty in determining which training elements are most effective in promoting employment and entrepreneurship because various types of content are mixed together in most experiments (McKenzie and Woodruff 2014). This study aims to inform this discussion by examining the relative effectiveness of providing youth with the following: (i) occupation‐specific skills through technical training, plus on‐the‐job training (treatment A); (ii) business skills training and facilitation of access to finance (treatment B); and (iii) a package combining the two (treatment C). However, given that Ebola effectively nullified the capital intervention among groups B and C by rendering the microfinance element infeasible, the comparison involves a technical skills package with on‐the‐job‐training, a business skills package, and a combination of both.

The expectation based on the program design was that larger effects would be found in treatment group C, which combined all aspects of the intervention, but this is not borne out by the data. There is no evidence that the various training elements are additive: the econometric results undermine the hypothesis that the impacts of receiving treatment C are either greater than or equal to the combined impacts of receiving treatments A and B; nor are the vast majority of the impacts statistically distinguishable across the groups (appendix A, table A7). There is thus insufficient evidence to conclude that any one package is more effective at increasing the employability of youth and promoting youth‐owned household enterprises.

The absence of statistically significant differences across the groups may partly reflect the evaluation timeline and the consequences of the Ebola crisis. The endline survey was collected less than a year after the end of the intervention, thus covering a short span postintervention. As a result, the market may not have yet recognized the newly acquired skills and abilities, limiting comparisons across the groups. This drawback was intensified by the fact that program participants graduated from the training to join a labor market severely affected by the Ebola crisis. The ability of the participants to secure employment was undoubtedly affected by the generally poor economic climate, as evidenced by the steep decline in the urban employment rate from 75 percent to 67 percent, an 8 percentage point increase in the number of household enterprises out of operation (a measure of business survival), and a contraction in business revenues by 40 percent (Fu et al. 2015). However, the lack of differences also provides suggestive evidence that foundational skills, particularly basic literacy and numeracy, and participation in an intensive training intervention alone have the potential to enhance skills among youth in generalized low‐skill contexts.

# _Cash versus skills_

There is some debate as to whether skills or capital are more important at inducing changes. The study design did not allow for a robust comparison between these two elements, making it difficult to disentangle the respective effects. In addition, although the program was designed to reduce capital constraints to entrepreneurship through microfinance facilitation, the Ebola crisis disrupted this aspect. The program’s influence in relieving capital constraints was thus reduced to a cash infusion in the form of the stipend provided to all groups. Nonetheless, the data allow some reasonable speculation that neither skills nor cash alone (at least in the amount provided) would have been sufficient to achieve the range of impacts found.

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