Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Call Me Maybe: Experimental Evidence on Using Mobile Phones to Survey Microenterprises

Garlick, Orkin and Quinn (2020) analyzes the effects of differences in survey frequency and medium on microenterprise survey data. A sample of enterprises were randomly assigned to monthly in-person, weekly in-person, or weekly phone surveys for a 12-week panel.

Journal Article
1 Jun 2020

Loan Contract Structure and Adverse Selection: Survey Evidence from Uganda

While adverse selection is an important theoretical explanation for credit rationing it is difficult to quantify empirically.

Journal Article
1 Apr 2020

Enterprise Responses to Redistribution in Kenya

This project studies a randomized, large-scale unconditional cash transfer program in Kenya, and find a meaningful increase in revenues for enterprises in areas experiencing a greater volume of cash transfers.

Research Note
27 Feb 2020

Microentrepreneurship in Developing Countries

This paper reviews the recent literature in economics on small-scale entrepreneurship (“microentrepreneurship”) in low-income countries.

Synthesis Paper
11 Feb 2020

Lights Off, Lights On: The Effects of Electricity Shortages on Small Firms

Entrepreneurs in developing countries report that unreliable electricity imposes a serious constraint, yet little evidence exists on how blackouts impact the micro-firms that account for the majority of employment.

Journal Article
9 Nov 2019

Connecting Markets in Nepal: Evidence from Randomised Bridge Construction

This projects studies how firms are affected when transportation infrastructure provides them with access to new markets and when outside firms gain access to their local markets.

Research Project
1 Nov 2019

Information Frictions in Government-Firm Relationships

This project identifies the role of information frictions in the relationships between firms and government bodies.

Research Project
1 Oct 2019

A Labour Markets Research Agenda through a Job Matching Platform

This project will study the effects of actual and threatened skills audits on applicants’ skill reporting decisions, applicants’ skill investment decisions, firms’ hiring decisions, and firm-applicant match quality.

Research Project
1 Oct 2019

Long-Run Enterprise Responses to Redistribution: Experimental Evidence from Kenya

Cash transfer programs continue to be implemented and expanded by governments and non-government organizations in many low-income countries as a tool for poverty alleviation. When implemented at scale, such programs may have important short- and long-run implications for firms. However, there are relatively few opportunities to study how an economy responds to an exogenous shock of such a magnitude, and the response of the private sector is critical in determining how these types of shocks will propagate through the economy.

Research Project
18 Sep 2019

Impacts of Industrial and Entrepreneurial Jobs on Youth: 5-Year Evidence on Factory Job Offers and Cash Grants in Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, Blattman, Dercon and Franklin (2019) randomly assign mostly female jobseekers to receive an industrial job offer or an unconditional cash transfer, meant to spur self-employment.

Research Note
12 Sep 2019

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