A randomized controlled trial with 945 entrepreneurs in Jamaica shows positive short-term impacts of soft-skills training on business outcomes. The effects are concentrated among men and disappear 12 months after the training. The main channel is increased adoption of recommended business...

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...

Does entrepreneurship contribute to improving social mobility in Ecuador? This paper constructs a pseudo-panel to analyze the dynamic effect of entrepreneurship on Ecuadorian household incomes during the period 2002-2010. Using three estimation scenarios, the paper finds a significant level of...

How can policymakers promote women-led exporting firms? In this paper, we study the role of online business platforms to reduce informational barriers to exporting for women entrepreneurs. We hypothesize that, if the costs associated with accessing digital platforms are more symmetric across...

We conducted two randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate the impact of government-guaranteed loans offered by the Chilean and Colombian governments. The public funds of these programs greatly expanded following the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and offered loans to Micro, Small and...

This paper evaluates the impacts of increasing female representation in Bolivian municipal councils on public policy choices and welfare outcomes. By combining detailed administrative panel data on municipal expenditures and revenues together with electoral data, an innovative regression...

This paper evaluates the impact of a rural land administration program in Ecuador on female empowerment and household food security. Using a double robust estimation that combines the difference-in-difference approach with inverse probability weighting, we explore whether receiving a...

This paper analyzes gender bias in teaching in low-performing schools in Chile. To carry out the analyses, the authors used videotaped classes for fourth graders and coded 237 tapings. Results show a general (although not uniform) bias in teachers' actions that resulted in less attention to...