Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Household Matters: Revisiting the Returns to Capital among Female Micro-entrepreneurs

Multiple field experiments report positive financial returns to capital shocks for male and not female microentrepreneurs. But these analyses overlook the fact that female entrepreneurs often reside with male entrepreneurs.

Journal Article
1 Sep 2019

Pricing Decisions and Over-Entry of Delhi Fruit Vendors

This project explores the theory that the lack of price competition between vendors, and the subsequent oversupply of vendors, is caused by collusion and under-experimentation.

Research Project
1 Aug 2019

Financial deepening through loan pricing transparency and its impacts

This project investigates the role of access to comparative loan information in consumer borrowing decisions, and how providing easy-to-process comparative information improves decision making.

Research Project
1 Aug 2019

Developing a “Product-Market Experimentation & Fit” Measurement Tool and Testing its Effectiveness via an RCT with Lean Start-up Entrepreneurs in Kenya and Uganda

This project aims to improve our understanding of ‘demand-side factors’ related to why some small firms succeed and scale-up, while others do not.

Research Project
1 Aug 2019

Dispute resolution and microenterprise growth in a 'fragile' state: Evidence from Somalia

This project examines the formal and informal institutions for dispute resolution used by microenterprises in Somalia, how access to them affects business outcomes and whether the provision of female-only saving and loan groups can redress gender imbalances in access to dispute resolution.

Research Project
1 Aug 2019

Information Sharing in Trade Credit Markets: Evidence from Kenyan Retail Shops

In developing countries financial frictions hinder firm growth. Credit constraints result from poor contract enforcement and asymmetric information in the credit market.

Working Paper
19 May 2019

Negotiating Business and Family Demands within a Patriarchal Society - The Case of Women Entrepreneurs in the Nepalese Context

The aim of this paper, published in Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, is to advance our understanding of how women negotiate their business and family demands in a developing country context.

Journal Article
1 Apr 2019

Measuring the Unmeasured: Combining Technology and Behavioral Insights to Improve Measurement of Business Outcomes

Business survey outcomes for micro and small firms are notoriously noisy, with multiple sources of measurement and recall error. Anderson et al.

Working Paper
1 Apr 2019

Getting Capital to Microenterprises: What do we know about why and how?

Recent research illuminates the opportunity to increase incomes of microenterprise owners through the provision of capital.

Policy Insight
1 Dec 2018

Pathways to Profits: The Impact of Marketing versus Finance Skills on Business Performance

This paper by Anderson, Chandy and Zia (2017), published in Management Science, examines the impact of improvements in marketing skills relative to finance skills among small business owners.

Journal Article
1 Dec 2018

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