Measuring Microenterprise Profits : Don't Ask How the Sausage is Made

de Mel, Suresh ; McKenzie, David ; Woodruff, Christopher

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ACCOUNT;    ACCOUNTING;    ACCOUNTS;    BOOKKEEPING;    BUSINESS EXPENSES;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-4229
RP-ID  :  WPS4229

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 large share of the world's pooris self-employed. Accurate measurement of profits frommicroenterprises is therefore critical for studying povertyand inequality, measuring the returns to education, andevaluating the success of microfinance programs. But amyriad of problems plague the measurement of profits. Theauthors report on a variety of different experimentsconducted to better understand the importance of some ofthese problems and to draw recommendations for collectingprofit data. In particular, they (1) examine how far we canreconcile self-reported profits and reports of revenue minusexpenses through more detailed questions; (2) examine recallerrors in sales and report on the results of experimentswhich randomly allocated account books to firms; and (3) askfirms how much firms like theirs underreport sales insurveys like this, and have research assistants observe thefirms at random times 15-16 times during a month to providemeasures for comparison. The authors conclude that firmsunderreport revenues by about 30 percent, that accountdiaries have significant effects on both revenues andexpenses but not on profits, and that simply asking profitsprovides a more accurate measure of firm profits thandetailed questions on revenues and expenses.