This paper assesses the medium-run effects of government support to firms during the COVID-19 crisis and whether the effectiveness of this support varied with its timing. Using data from three rounds of the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys COVID-19 Follow-up Surveys carried out between May 2020...

Many governments have spent much of the past decade trying to extend a helping hand to informal businesses by making it easier and cheaper for them to formalize. Much less effort has been devoted to raising the costs of remaining informal, through increasing enforcement of existing regulations....

We test whether managerial human capital has a first order effect on the performance and growth of small enterprises in emerging markets. In a randomized control trial in Puebla, Mexico, we randomly assigned 150 out of 432 small and medium size enterprises to receive subsidized consulting...

The rise in unemployment during an economic crisis poses a significant concern to policy makers. This paper measures the effect of a program in Mexico that granted firms in certain industries wage subsidies if they decided to keep their workers instead of letting them go during the recent...

This paper studies the use of psychometric tests, designed by the Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (EFL), as a tool to screen out high credit risk and potentially increase access to credit for small business owners in Peru. We use administrative data covering the period from June 2011 to April 2014...

This thesis is a collection of three essays on entry regulation, institutions, and development.Chapter 1 examines the effect of a business registration reform in Mexico on economic activity. This reform made registration procedures less complex and was implemented in different municipalities at...