Description:

Natalie Bau (University of California, Los Angeles): "Negotiating a Better Future: How Interpersonal Skills Facilitate Inter-Generational Investment." 

Abstract: Using a randomized controlled trial, we study whether a negotiation skills training can improve girls' educational outcomes in a low-income country. In so doing, we provide new evidence on the effects of increasing interpersonal skills during adolescence. We find negotiation training significantly improved educational outcomes over the next three years, and these effects did not fade out. To better understand mechanisms, we estimate the effects of two alternative treatments. Negotiation had much stronger effects than an informational treatment, which had no effect. An empowerment treatment had directionally positive but insignificant educational effects. Relative to the empowerment training, negotiation increased enrollment in higher quality schooling and had greater effects for high ability girls. These findings are consistent with a model where negotiation allows high ability girls on the margin of being enrolled in school to elicit greater educational investment by strategically cooperating with their parents, a mechanism supported by lab-in-field and midline survey evidence.