The dynamics of SMEs: informality and entrepreneurship

Air pollution is a major health concern in many Indian cities exposing millions of people to extremely toxic air. Stubble burning is a major contributor to air pollution in northern parts of India, where it accounts for up to 40% of air pollution [SAFAR, 2019]. After conducting a pilot randomised controlled trial in August 2022 with 205 farmers, researchers finds that providing information and bio-decomposers to farmers reduced burning by 29% in comparison to control group farmers.

This project tries to understand bribery’s effect on entrepreneurship, which could help policymakers design interventions to aid the development of new enterprises, thus fostering growth and alleviating poverty.

This project seeks to investigate how and why fertilizers’ quality degrades as it makes its way from urban ports to rural farmers.

This project considers an innovative new microfinance product, based on the principles of equity financing, in which promising potential entrepreneurs are provided with capital, training and mentorship to help them become online freelancers.

The project explores whether business can be encouraged to form horizontal linkages and collaborate on higher quality production through the offer of an opportunity to be part of a vertical linkage in Zambia.

This project investigates the existence of a ‘market for lemons’, i.e. markets sell only low quality products since sellers are not able to signal high quality products to consumers, for agro-inputs in rural Kenya.

This project uses a randomized controlled experiment to test the role of behavioural factors in the high take-up rates and subsequent high repayments for asset-collateralized loans.

How do citizens react to political connections when the rule of law is weak? This project estimates the impact of political connections on trust in economic exchange in Senegal and, when exchange occurs, it explores whether buyers prefer formal or informal contracts.

This work will shed light on how much employers value cognitive (e.g. IQ) and non-cognitive (e.g. motivation, perseverance etc.) skills and the extent to which these skills are predictive of future productivity.

This project expands a previous intervention that implemented a fleet management system in Kenya’s semi-formal public transport system along three margins: possible negative effects of the tracking system, role of cash incentives in enhancing safety and increasing duration and participation to the pilot.