A Helping Hand or the Long Arm of the Law? : Experimental Evidence on What Governments Can Do to Formalize Firms

de Adrade, Gustavo Henrique ; Bruhn, Miriam ; McKenzie, David

Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank

关键词: FORMALIZATION;    INFORMALITY;    BUSINESS REGISTRATION;    BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT;    SMALL FIRMS;   

DOI  :  10.1093/wber/lhu008

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

We conducted a field experiment in Belo Horizonte, Brazil to test which governmentactions work to encourage informal firms to register. We find zero or negative impactsof information and free cost treatments and a significant but small increase in formalization from inspections. The local average treatment effect estimates of the inspection impact are larger, providing a 21 to 27 percentage point increase in the likelihood of formalizing. The results show that most informal firms will not formalize unless forced to do so, suggesting that formality offers little private benefit to these firms.