In this paper, Kamutando (2019) examines the link between financial constraints, misallocation and firm growth in the informal manufacturing sector in Zimbabwe.
Property rights are important for economic exchange, but in much of the world they are not publicly guaranteed. Private market associations can fill this gap by providing an institutional structure to enforce agreements, but with this power comes the ability to extort from group members.
When contracting institutions are weak or exploitable, firms in developing countries rely on a mixture of social and formal heuristics to select business partners.
What is the effect of exposing motivated youth to firm management in practice? To answer this question, Abebe, Fafchamps, Koelle and Quinn (2019) place young professionals for one month in established firms to shadow middle managers.
The assignment of workers to tasks is an important feature of the organization of production within firms. Adhvaryu, Kala and Nyshadham (2017) study how task allocation across workers changes in response to productivity shocks.
This working paper, by Alfaro-Ureña, Manelici and Vasquez (2019), investigates the effects of becoming a supplier to multinational corporations (MNCs) using administrative data tracking all firm-to-firm transactions in Costa Rica.
Economic growth requires confidence in the state's ability to enforce secure exchange. But when states selectively enforce rule of law, political considerations can moderate the trust that buyers have in sellers.
Blattman et al. (2019) study two interventions for underemployed youth across five Ethiopian sites: a $300 grant to spur self-employment, and a job offer to an industrial firm.
Despite the importance of agglomeration externalities in theoretical work, evidence for their nature, scale, and scope remains elusive, particularly in developing countries.
