向内和/或向外：尼日利亚农业企业企业家的社会情感技能是什么？

Policy Research Working Paper Turning Inward and/or Outward Which Socioemotional Skills Pay for AgribusinessEntrepreneurs in Nigeria?Public Disclosure Authorized Smita DasClara DelavalladeAyodele FashogbonSreelakshmi Papineni Policy Research Working Paper11325 Abstract Socioemotional skills programs are widely used to promoteeconomic empowerment, yet their returns may vary byskill-type and gender. This paper evaluates a socioemotionalskills intervention for 4,500 agribusiness owners in a large-scale government program in Nigeria. Using a randomizedcontrolled trial, the paper examines whether trainings thatfocus on interpersonal skills yield higher economic returnswhen combined with intrapersonal skills among men and women’s interpersonal skills (negotiation, empathy and col-laboration), and the combination training improves men’sintrapersonal skills (emotional awareness and perseverance).The positive impacts on women’s business performance arestrongest in norm supportive environments—where there islittle perceived judgment from the community for defyingtraditional gender roles—with no evidence of an effect on The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about developmentissues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry thenames of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those Turning Inward and/or Outward: Which SocioemotionalSkills Pay for Agribusiness Entrepreneurs in Nigeria? Smita Das, Clara Delavallade, Ayodele Fashogbon, and Sreelakshmi Papineni Keywords: Gender, Agriculture, Entrepreneurship, Socioemotional skills, Firms, NigeriaJEL: J16, J24, O12, Q12, L26 ∗We thank Garima Nain for excellent research assistance and Wale Ogunleye, Emeka Wilfried Nweke, and Mubarik Yakubufor superb research and field management. This paper completed a Stage 1 (pre-results) review at theJournal of DevelopmentEconomicsin 2023, and we thank the editor, Jeremy Magruder, and two anonymous reviewers whose suggestions helpeddrastically improve the quality of this work. We also thank Aletheia Donald, participants at the CSAE conference, IPA-GPRLresearcher gathering at Northwestern, and World Bank seminars for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper.This paper is a product of the World Bank Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA).We thank the Agro-Processing, Agricultural Productivity Enhancement and Livelihood Improvement Support (APPEALS)project team and Alkimia who were instrumental in the success of the implementation of the trainings. We are grateful to the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund and the World Bank Umbrella Fund for Gender Equality (UFGE) for funding support.Thefindings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors.They do not necessarilyrepresent the views of the World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or 1Introduction Socioemotional skills (SES) — such as self-efficacy, assertiveness, and negotiation — areincreasingly recognized as critical drivers of labor market success.1 Seminal work by Heck- man et al. (2006) demonstrated that cognitive ability explains only a small fraction of thevariation in earnings, emphasizing the importance of broader skill sets in shaping economic performance.While substantial evidence from high-income countries highlights their eco-nomic returns (Borghans et al., 2008; Almlund et al., 2011; Lindqvist and Vestman, 2011;Heckman and Kautz, 2012; Deming, 2017; Edin et al., 2022), the role of SES in shaping eco-nomic performance in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) remains less understood. In this paper we use a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to examine the impact of dif-ferent types of SES training on economic outcomes and agency for men and women in the context of a large-scale government program in Nigeria.2Interpersonalskills, such as negoti-ation and collaboration, are outward-facing and facilitate social awareness and relationship-building, whileintrapersonalskills, such as self-control and perseverance, are inward-facing and focus on self-awareness and self-regulation.As many existing SES trainings focus onintrapersonal skills alone, a central debate in SES interventions is whether interpersonal skills matter for economic outcomes, and whether intrapersonal skills serve as a founda- equally, allowing direct gender comparisons and the wide study coverage across northern andsouthern Nigerian states enables analysis of how returns vary with social norms.4 Furthermore, social role theory suggests that societal expectations shape and rewardskill development differently for men and women, with women traditionally acquiring morecommunal skills (suc