Innovation

Business incubators are a useful policy tool for spurring and supporting entrepreneurial businesses, but we know too little about their impact in Africa.

Business incubators are a policy tool for spurring and supporting entrepreneurial businesses. In recent years, many African countries have established many of them.

Micro-entrepreneurs represent the most common type of business in the world, and marketing is a primary means by which they earn their livelihoods.

We use plant level census data to identify spillovers from FDI in Ethiopia’s manufacturing sector.

We provide evidence that violence reduces the adoption and use of mobile money in three separate empirical settings in Afghanistan. First, analyzing nationwide mobile money transaction logs, we find that users exposed to violence reduce use of mobile money.

This paper was initially published in 2018 under the title 'The Impact of Monitoring Technologies on Contracts and Employee Behavior: Experimental Evidence from Kenya's Transit Industry'.

Informational constraints are often a crucial barrier to adoption of innovations in firms. How can firms overcome this barrier and increase upward flows of ideas?

Adhvaryu, Kala and Nyshadham (2020) study the adoption of energy-efficient LED lighting in garment factories around Bangalore, India.

The introduction of labor-saving technologies in agriculture can release workers who find occupation in the manufacturing sector. The traditional view is that this structural transformation process leads to economic growth.