This paper provides the first experimental evaluation of the participatory budgeting model showing that it increased public participation in the process of public decision making, increased local tax revenues collection, channeled larger fractions of public budgets to services stated as top...

This paper uses a randomized controlled experiment in Costa Rica to determine whether IB use by Banco Nacional de Desarrollo's micro and small enterprise (MSE) clients has an impact on their performance, measured in terms of productivity, increase in sales, and cost reduction. Results from the...

En este documento se presenta una serie de lineamientos y lecciones operativas para promover mercados de servicios de desarrollo empresarial (SDE) para las micro, pequeñas y medianas empresas (MIPyME) a través de mecanismos de bonos y fondos compartidos. Estas experiencias son analizadas en el...

This study was prepared for the Financial Services and Poverty Reduction research project and was presented at the conference with the same name held at Bank headquarters in September of 2004. It first establishes the considerable welfare cost borne by the region's poor when facing uncovered...

This paper outlines some of the issues that affect small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in three areas: regulation, procurement, and dispute resolution. The work presented herein is part of the Bank's most recent efforts to develop new approaches and instruments to strengthen its role as a...

This paper proposes a conceptual framework for understanding and analyzing how business regulations affect small and microenterprises. In doing so, it also makes a case for why particular attention should be paid to the process of initial registration of businesses and why this is a promising...

This paper aims to shed light on changes in the saving behavior of microentrepreneurs in response to improved access to credit. This paper argues that it is necessary to extend the analysis to the shifting of assets between different forms of savings. The econometric analysis in this paper,...

This study assesses poverty in the microenterprise sector in Latin America, presenting stylized facts on potential poverty risk factors at the household and individual levels. The goal of the paper is to describe the main trends in the region and the scope of the paper is limited to a...

The purpose of this paper is fourfold. First, it seeks to highlight the general characteristics of the microenterprise sector and the microfinance industry in the Anglophone Caribbean. Second, it will examine the main factors that help explain the differences in the development of sustainable...

This document describes the efforts of the Department of Labor of Rio de Janeiro to build a comprehensive institutional framework focused on the promotion of a long run, micro-firm based local economic development model and to create a path to sustainable economic growth, job creation and...