Vietnam's young private sector is growing fast. Crucial to this growth has been a policy environment that increasingly recognizes the importance of private entrepreneurship-particularly its potential to help address the country¹s pressing need for significantly increased wage employment...

The authors evaluate the role of dynamic small and medium-size manufacturing enterprises and entrepreneurs (SMEs) in Colombia's development. They also evaluate SME policy in Colombia, especially as it affects the country's export potential. The SME sector has received little attention from...

In Vietnam almost a quarter of adults worked in nonfarm household enterprises in 1998. Based on household panel data from the Vietnam Living Standards Surveys of 1993 and 1998, the authors find some evidence that operating an enterprise leads to greater affluence. The data show that nonfarm...

Using a comprehensive database of firms in Western and Eastern Europe, the authors study how the business environment in a country drives the creation of new firms. They focus on regulations governing entry, although they also examine the effects of a developed financial sector, a well-trained...

The authors survey a sample of 91 small or medium-size exporters of garments, rattan furniture, the two are reasonably equally mixed. About 75 percent of the entrepreneures in garments and rattan furniture, and carved wooden furniture (Jepara), and interview people in public and nonprofit...

Case studies and anecdotal evidence have suggested that uncertainty about policies, laws, and regulations has hampered development of the private sector in many developing countries. The authors present results from a new cross-country survey that provides comparable data on local...

The informal microfirm sector is believed to be large, accounting for 20-40 percent of employment in many developing countries. The literature tends to view the sector as the disadvantaged sector of a segmented labor market, as existing to evade government regulations, or as constrained by lack...

This paper is a case study of what is recognized as one of the more successful projects in any country in the Europe and Central Asia region, not to mention in the poorest country of the region-Moldova. The ARIA project shows new ways to attack some of the most intractable problems of private...