The timely enforcement of supplier contracts by courts of justice is an important determinant of firms’ organizational structure and overall productivity.
Efforts to bring informal firms into the formal sector are often based on a view that this will bring benefits to the firms themselves, or at least benefit governments through increasing the tax base.
Several field experiments find positive returns to grants for male and not female micro- entrepreneurs. But these analyses overlook that female entrepreneurs often reside with a male business owner.
This paper by Beáta Itin-Shwartz (2017) investigates competition and market share dominance in the Indian fertilizer sector during a process of deregulation, using a newly constructed database.
Hardy and McCasland (2017) report the results of a field experiment that randomly placed unemployed young people as apprentices with small firms in Ghana.
Firms in poor countries are much smaller than firms in rich countries, with the modal firm being a single person, the owner. Meanwhile, youth unemployment and underemployment are widespread.
