Limited access to finance is one of the major barriers for women entrepreneurs in Africa. This paper presents a model of start-ups in which firms’ sales and profits depend on their productivity and access to credit. However, due to the lack of collateral assets such as land, female...

We explore reasons underlying the economic prosperity of certain popular merchants in Bolivia. Even if economics often associates popular merchants with poor economic performance and low productivity, anthropological evidence shows the existence of large fortunes in the bolivian popular economy...

This paper investigates the existence and nature of constraints prevailing among Mexican microenterprises. It provides inter-temporal insights by relying on firm-level data spanning from 1994 to 2012. A performance index is defined based on firm levels of capital stock and monthly profits, and...

Limited access to finance is one of the major barriers for women entrepreneurs in Africa. This paper presents a model of start-ups in which firms' sales and profits depend on their productivity and access to credit. However, due to the lack of collateral assets such as land, female entrepreneurs...

We exploit a quasi-natural experiment of mobilized draftees in Russia during World War I to examine the effects of a massive, negative labor shock on agricultural production. Employing a novel district-level panel dataset, we find that mobilization produces a dramatic decrease in cultivated...

The aim of this paper is to quantify the role of formal-sector institutions in shaping the demand for human capital and the level of informality. We propose a firm dynamics model where firms face capital market imperfections and costs of operating in the formal sector. Formal firms have a larger...

This paper contributes to the emerging literature investigating agglomeration externalities in developing countries. It is the first paper to estimate how agglomeration externality generation and reception varies for formal and informal firms by source. Using establishment level data, we find...

This paper highlights the moral hazard problem in credence goods offered in the market as referral services. Credence Goods includes goods purchased with trust that is not observed by consumers who make the purchase, which makes disutility on the consumer. The paper aims to determine if both the...

Using a firm-level panel dataset on private small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Viet Nam's manufacturing sector, this paper examines productivity dynamics of formal and informal firms. We decompose productivity changes into changes within and between formal and informal firms. We...

We explore reasons underlying the economic prosperity of certain popular merchants in Bolivia. Even if economics often associates popular merchants with poor economic performance and low productivity, anthropological evidence shows the existence of large fortunes in the bolivian popular economy...