The dynamics of SMEs: informality and entrepreneurship

This project undertakes the first ever randomized evaluation of micro-franchising in Kenya, a policy intervention that connects unemployed young women with businesses through multi-person franchises.

This project estimates the spillover effects on competing firms and through the supply chain of an credit intervention with SMEs.

The research team built a unique data set on Afghani households to study the causal relationship between conflict and private enterprise, in particular entrepreneurship, in conflict-affected areas.

This case study of the cross-border investment of female entrepreneurs in the East African Community region aims to assess the impact of regional integration on the expansion of female-run enterprises and identify constraints on the growth of these enterprises.

In post-conflict settings, credit constraints and risk are often prevalent and binding. This project uses an experiment to estimate the competing effects of credit constraints and risk of retail firms at the end of commodity supply chains in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

In countries with weakly institutionalized legal environments, private contract enforcement mechanisms arise to facilitate trade. This project focuses on cheating in business and the interaction between private contract enforcement and public legal institutions. 

This detailed study of the Indian brick industry allows for reliable estimates of firm productivity, disentangling competing explanations of variations in revenue and output across firms such as capital misallocation, market power, and adjustment costs.

Using one treatment to reduce the costs of registration for firms and one to emphasize the legal costs of informality, this project seeks to identify specific policy interventions designed to induce the formalization of firms.

By analyzing small-scale enterprises in Egypt's carpet industry, this project disentangles causal effects of exporting on productivity and welfare measures, as well as analyzes the firm-specific factors that contribute to export success.

This project begins the initial work into creating a feasible pilot internship program for young Ethiopians, in order to study the impact of training in entrepreneurial skills and improved business networks on the emergence and growth of new firms in developing countries.