Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Following the first confirmed cases of COVID-19 pandemic in mid-March 2020, the Ethiopia government imposed stringent measures to combat the spread of the virus including borderland control measures, travel restrictions, social distancing measures, and lockdowns.

Can informal institutions facilitate enterprise growth through resolving business disputes in the contexts where formal mechanisms are near-complete failure?

As a result of this project the Ghanaian 2014 Integrated Business Establishment Survey (IBES) firm census microdata has been made publicly available through DataFirst, a microdata repository at the University of Cape Town.

Despite the popularity of business training among policy-makers, its use has faced increasing scepticism. Most of the first randomized experiments could not detect statistically significant impacts of training on firm profits or sales.

Business sales and profits for small firms are notoriously difficult to measure, with multiple sources of measurement and recall error.

This project highlights how improving managerial practices may foster the development of the private sector and how the economic environment may create incentives for better management among small and medium-sized enterprises in low-income countries.