This book breaks away from the exclusively macroeconomic focus of development studies to bring the spotlight to the place where decisions are made: households. Complementing this microeconomic view with an aggregate approach, this volume uncovers clues to declining fertility, skyrocketing female...

Entrepreneurship contributes to a vibrant private sector and can stimulate broader economic growth. Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have experienced an important growth of microenterprises led by women, but little is known about the factors that explain this trend. This study,...

This paper studies the effect of government-backed partial credit guarantees on firms' performance. These guarantees are automatically granted to firms without enough collateral in order to lift their credit constraints. We put together a panel, covering the period 1997-2007, that combines data...

There is a recent renewal of interest in the relation between shifts in age structures of populations and various economic outcomes. These shifts are triggered by changes in fertility and mortality that take place some years before becoming apparent in the standard age structure and that may...

Government-owned development banks have often been justified by the need to respond to financial market imperfections that hinder the establishment and growth of promising businesses, and as a result, stifle economic development more generally. However, evidence on the effectiveness of these...

The paper uses microeconomic data to characterize entrepreneurs by income group and selected household, individual and business characteristics, finding that entrepreneurship is rare but more frequent in the upper class than the middle or lower classes. Middle-class entrepreneurs are, on...

Entrepreneurship contributes to a vibrant private sector and can stimulate broader economic growth. Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have experienced an important growth of microenterprises led by women, but little is known about the factors that explain this trend. This study,...

This book breaks away from the exclusively macroeconomic focus of development studies to bring the spotlight to the place where decisions are made: households. Complementing this microeconomic view with an aggregate approach, this volume uncovers clues to declining fertility, skyrocketing female...