Does limited access to formal savings services impede business growth in poor countries? To shed light on this question, we randomized access to non-interest-bearing bank accounts among two types of self-employed individuals in rural Kenya: market vendors (who are mostly women) and men working...

Theory and evidence have raised concerns that microcredit does more harm than good, particularly when offered at high interest rates. We use a clustered randomized trial, and household surveys of eligible borrowers and their businesses, to estimate impacts from an expansion of group lending at...

Family firms depend on a succession of capable heirs to stay afloat. If talent and IQ are inherited, this problem is mitigated. If, however, progeny talent and IQ display mean reversion (or worse), family firms are eventually doomed. This is the essence of the critique of family firms in...

Large pyramidal family controlled business groups are the predominant form of business organization outside America, Britain, Germany, and Japan. Large pyramidal groups comprising dozens, even hundreds, or listed and unlisted firms place the governance of large swathes of many countries' big...

We study how the disclosure of corrupt practices affects the growth of firms involved in illegal interactions with the government using randomized audits of public procurement in Brazil. On average, firms exposed by the anti-corruption program grow larger after the audits, despite experiencing a...

Many countries appear to have excessively stable big business sectors, in that higher rates of big business turnover have been correlated with faster economy growth. Public policies that stabilize big business sectors are sometimes justified as supportive of social objectives. We find no...

We explore the relation between international financial integration and the level of entrepreneurial activity in a country. We use a unique firm level data set of approximately 24 million firms in nearly 100 countries in 2004 and 1999, which enables us to present both cross-country and industry...

This paper examines whether financial development boosts the growth of small firms more than large firms and hence provides information on the mechanisms through which financial development fosters aggregate economic growth. We define an industry's technological firm size as the firm size...

What is the optimal form of firm organization during "bad times"? We present a model of delegation within the firm to show that the effect is ambiguous. The greater turbulence following macro shocks may benefit decentralized firms because the value of local information increases (the "localist"...