South Africa

As a lack of information on worker and jobseeker skills may contribute to low firm productivity, this study aims to directly measure the consequences of improving information to employers about potential workers through twin randomized controlled trials. 

This randomized evaluation studies the effects of incentivising microfinance loan officers to identify clients with the highest potential returns on their loans, in order to test the hypothesis that the business model of classic microfinance institutions might be one of the reasons why high-growth microentrepreneurs have difficulty accessing SME-level loans. 

This project tests the feasibility and effectiveness of using mobile phones to collect accurate high-frequency data on microenterprise profits and sales relative to conventional face-to-face data collection methods.

This project aims to analyze job creation and destruction in private enterprises in South Africa since 2005, and also explores electronic archives to find historic data on firm dynamics from the 1960s onwards, providing fascinating insights into job creation in the face of massive unemployment.