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soft skills

Worker productivity and soft skills

Markus Goldstein's picture
There’s a lot of talk about soft skills and how they might help boost productivity and earnings.    Into this literature comes a neat new paper by Achyuta Adhvaryu, Namrata Kala, and Anant Nyshadham which looks at the returns to providing training on these skills for factory workers in India.   They provide a convincing case that it might make economic sense for firms to provide trainings for these skills.  
 

We know socio-emotional skills are important – How do we develop them? A review of Paul Tough’s Helping Children Succeed

David Evans's picture
In 2012, Paul Tough published How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, in which he highlighted how children who develop “noncognitive capacities” like self-control and perseverance do much better in adulthood.

Book Review: Grit – Takeaways for Development Economists and Parents

David McKenzie's picture

Angela Duckworth’s new book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance has been launched with great fanfare, reaching number two on the NY Times Nonfiction bestseller list. She recently gave a very polished and smooth book launch talk to a packed audience at the World Bank, and is working with World Bank colleagues on improving grit in classrooms in Macedonia. Billed as giving “the secret to outstanding achievement” I was interested in reading the book as both a researcher and a parent. I thought I’d continue my book reviews series with some thoughts on the book.