Czura, Menzel and Miotto (2019) conducted a randomised controlled trial (RCT) on a sample of 1,000 female garment workers in three factories in Bangladesh, offering access to free sanitary pads at work to 500 of the workers.
The shift from subsistence to commercial economies creates surplus, but often induces conflict over it. Under extractive institutions and weak contract enforcement, crony capitalism may emerge and limit the benefits of modernization.
Sending SMS messages with agricultural advice to smallholder farmers increased yields by 11.5% relative to a control group with no messages. These effects are concentrated among farmers who had no agronomy training and had little interaction with sugar cane company staff at baseline.
Colonnelli and Prem (2019) estimate the causal real economic effects of a randomized anticorruption crackdown on local governments in Brazil over the period 2003-2014.
In this paper, Kamutando (2019) examines the link between financial constraints, misallocation and firm growth in the informal manufacturing sector in Zimbabwe.
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.
In developing countries financial frictions hinder firm growth. Credit constraints result from poor contract enforcement and asymmetric information in the credit market.
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.
