Current literature on the impact assessment of government innovation subsidies is mainly empirical driven and lacks an overarching theoretical model to explain the conditions under which government subsidies create positive additionalities on private R&D investment. In this paper, we present a...

We analyze linked databases on all Small Business Administration (SBA) loans, on all SBA lenders, and on all U.S. employers to estimate the effects of financial access on employment growth. Our methods combine regressions with matching on firm age, size, industry, year, and employment history,...

Improving productivity among microenterprises is important, especially in low-income countries where market imperfections are pervasive, and resources are scarce. Relaxing credit constraints can increase the productivity of microenterprises. Using a field experiment involving agricultural...

This paper studies the importance of dynamic earnings modeling for the design of income contingent student loans (ICLs). ICLs have been shown to be theoretically optimal in terms of efficiency in the presence of risk aversion, adverse selection and moral hazard, and have attractive equity...

Small Business Administration (SBA) loans have long been one of the most significant policy interventions in the U.S. affecting firm behavior, but little is known about their outcomes. This paper estimates the effects on employment using a list of all SBA loans linked to annual data on all U.S....

Analyzing a list of all Small Business Administration (SBA) loans in 1991 to 2009 linked with annual information on all U.S. employers from 1976 to 2012, we apply detailed matching and regression methods to estimate the variation in SBA loan effects on job creation and firm survival across firm...

Using a four-round panel data set from the first phase of the Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction – Targeting the Ultra Poor (CFPR – TUP) programme of BRAC, we investigate whether a one-off transfer of livestock assets improves well-being of the very poor women in Bangladesh....

Combining nationally representative administrative and survey data with official proxy means testing models and coefficients, we evaluate Indonesia's three largest social programs. The setting for our evaluation is the launch of Indonesia's Unified Targeting system, an innovation developed to...

We examine the consequences of underreporting of transfer programs in household survey data for several prototypical analyses of low-income populations. We focus on the Current Population Survey (CPS), the source of official poverty and inequality statistics. We link administrative data for food...

In many markets in developing countries, especially in remote areas, middlemen are thought to earn excessive profits. Non-profits come in to counter what is seen as middlemen's market power, and rich country consumers pay a "fair-trade" premium for products marketed by such non-profits. This...