This paper provides evidence that commercial lenders in Peru free ride off their peers'screening efforts. Leveraging a discontinuity in the loan approval process of a large bank, the study finds that competing lenders responded to additional loan approvals by issuing approvals of their own....

Using a panel of administrative data and regression discontinuity analysis, this paper examines how the introduction of preferential tax regimes for Georgian micro and small businesses in 2010 affects formal firm creation and tax compliance. The results show that the new tax regime for micro...

Using a randomized evaluation with 432 Mexican small and medium enterprises, this paper shows that access to management consulting led to better firm performance: one-year results show positive effects on return-on-assets and total factor productivity. Owners also had large increases in...

The majority of microenterprises in most developing countries remain informal despite more than a decade of reforms aimed at making it easier and cheaper for them to formalize. This paper summarizes the evidence on the effects of entry reforms and related policy actions to promote firm...

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....

This paper investigates the contribution of small firms to employment, job creation, and growth in developing countries. While small firms (20 employees) have the smallest share of aggregate employment, the SME sector's (100 employees) contribution is comparable to that of large firms. Small...

This study collaborated with the Entrepreneurial Finance Lab and a large bank in Peru to use psychometrics for small and medium-size enterprise lending. Applicants used a psychometric tool and those who achieved a score higher than a threshold were offered a loan. Using a regression...