This paper argues that rental market interactions allow small firms to increase their effective scale and mechanize production, even when each individual firm would be too small to invest in expensive machines. We conduct a novel survey of manufacturing firms in Uganda, which uncovers an active...

We organized business associations for the owner-managers of randomly selected young Chinese firms to study the effect of business networks on firm performance. We randomized 2,800 firms into small groups whose managers held monthly meetings for one year, and into a "no- meetings" control group....

We study the impacts of a rural development program designed to boost the income of the smallfarm sector in Nicaragua. Exploiting the random assignment of treatment, we find statistically and economically significant impacts on gross farm income and investment in productive farm capital. Using...

We examine businesses' financial management of a rare, severe event using detailed firm-level data collected following Hurricane Sandy in the New York area. Credit played a prominent role in financing recovery; more negatively affected firms took on debt because of Sandy (38%) than received...

In an RCT with US small businesses, we document that a large share of firms are not well-informed about bankruptcy. Many assume that bankruptcy necessarily entails the death of a business and do not know about Chapter 11 bankruptcy, where debts are renegotiated so that the business can continue...

By comparing uncollateralized business loans made by a big tech lending program with conventional bank loans, we find that big tech loans tend to be smaller and have higher interest rates and that borrowers of big tech loans tend to repay far before maturity and borrow more frequently. These...

Previous estimates indicate that COVID-19 led to a large drop in the number of operating businesses operating early in the pandemic, but surprisingly little is known on whether these shutdowns turned into permanent closures and whether small businesses were disproportionately hit. This paper...

Does emergency credit prevent long-term financial distress? We study the causal effects of government-provided recovery loans to small businesses following natural disasters. The rapid financial injection might enable viable firms to survive and grow or might hobble precarious firms with more...