Innovation is key to technology adoption and creation, and to explaining the vast differences in productivity across and within countries. Despite the central role of the entrepreneur in the innovation process, data limitations have restricted standard analysis of the determinants of innovation...

This timely study focuses on the important issue of new venture creation. Using a variety of data sources, methods and theories, the authors demonstrate the factors that aid or hinder new venture creation in a number of settings. The empirical context for this research is Sweden- a small open...

We conduct a randomized experiment in Sri Lanka to measure the impact of the most commonly used business training course in developing countries, the Start-and-Improve Your Business (SIYB) program. In contrast to existing business training evaluations which are restricted to microfinance...

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...

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....

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...