This paper reviews the recent literature in economics on small-scale entrepreneurship (“microentrepreneurship”) in low-income countries. Major themes in the literature include the determinants and consequences of joining the formal sector; the impacts of access to credit and other financial services; the impacts of business training; barriers to hiring; and the distinction between self-employment by necessity and self-employment as a calling. The paper devotes special attention to unique issues that arise with female entrepreneurship.
Firms, workers, and consumers in developing countries are increasingly connected to each other and the rest of the world through the internet. Can this connectivity transform poor economies, as techno-optimists hope, or are there more deeply rooted barriers to economic development?
In principle, firms in developing countries benefit from the fact that advanced technologies and products have already been developed in industrialized countries and can simply be adopted, a process often referred to as industrial upgrading.
Although global flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) have not recovered since the 2008 financial crisis, flows to developing countries have continued to register a very modest growth. But what is the impact of these FDI inflows on the recipient developing economies?
We document the trajectory of SMEs in Burkina Faso between 2020 and 2022, which were affected not only by the global Covid-19 shock, but also by several negative local shocks: two coups took place in 2022, in the context of increasing frequent terrorist attacks.
Female-owned businesses continue to be smaller and less profitable than male-owned firms. We conduct an RCT in Ghana on a sample of 1,771 growth-oriented female entrepreneurs to investigate the effect of online networking groups on firm performance.
