A common concern with efforts to directly help some small businesses to grow is that their growth comes at the expense of their unassisted competitors. We test this possibility using a two-stage randomized experiment in Kenya which randomizes business training at the market level, and then...

Many microenterprises in developing countries have high returns to capital, but also face risky revenue streams. In principle, equity offers several advantages over debt when financing investments of this nature, but the use of equity in practice has been largely limited to investments in much...

The majority of firms in most developing countries are informal. We conducted a field experiment in Sri Lanka which provided incentives for informal firms to formalize. Offering only information about the registration process and reimbursement for direct registration costs had no impact on...