Growing Markets through Business Training for Female Entrepreneurs : A Market-Level Randomized Experiment in Kenya

McKenzie, David ; Puerto, Susana

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: business training;    women entrepreneurs;    spillovers;    microenterprises;    market development;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7993
RP-ID  :  WPS7993

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

A common concern with efforts todirectly help some small businesses to grow is that theirgrowth comes at the expense of their unassisted competitors.This study tests this possibility using a two-stagerandomized experiment in Kenya. The experiment randomizesbusiness training at the market level, and then withinmarkets to selected businesses. Three years after training,the treated businesses are selling more, earn higherprofits, and their owners have higher well-being. There isno evidence of negative spillovers on the competingbusinesses, and the markets as a whole appear to have grownin terms of number of customers and sales volumes. Thismarket growth appears to come from enhanced customer serviceand new product introduction, generating more customers andmore sales from existing customers. As a result, businessgrowth in underdeveloped markets is possible without takingsales away from nontreated businesses.