Between 1940 and 1945, the US sponsored the Training within the Industry program with the goal of training managers to face the shortage of labor supply caused by WWII. Due to idiosyncrasies in the implementation of the program, however, not all the firms that government targeted eventually got the full training: some of them only received a part of it and some others were not treated. We use this variation in order to estimate the effects of the TWI program on firm performance. We find that receiving any managerial training had a positive effects on firm performance. The largest effects are generated by human resources training that is complementary to other managerial practices. We also find that the program produced larger effects when middle managers instead of top managers received the intervention.

Michela Giorcelli
Her interests lie at the intersection between Economic History, Labor Economics and Economics of Innovation. Her research primarily focuses on the determinants of productivity and innovation in the 20th century.