Business Training and Female Enterprise Start-up, Growth, and Dynamics : Experimental Evidence from Sri Lanka

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

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ABILITY LEVELS;    ACCOUNT;    ACCOUNTING;    ACCOUNTS;    ADVERTISING;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-6145
RP-ID  :  WPS6145

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The authors conduct a randomizedexperiment among women in urban Sri Lanka to measure theimpact of the most commonly used business training course indeveloping countries, the Start-and-Improve Your Businessprogram. They work with two representative groups of women:a random sample of women operating subsistence enterprisesand a random sample of women who are out of the labor forcebut interested in starting a business. They track theimpacts of two treatments -- training only and training plusa cash grant -- over two years with four follow-up surveysand find that the short and medium-term impacts differ. Forwomen already in business, training alone leads to somechanges in business practices but has no impact on businessprofits, sales or capital stock. In contrast, thecombination of training and a grant leads to large andsignificant improvements in business profitability in thefirst eight months, but this impact dissipates in the secondyear. For women interested in starting enterprises, businesstraining speeds up entry but leads to no increase in netbusiness ownership by the final survey round. Bothprofitability and business practices of the new entrants areincreased by training, suggesting training may be moreeffective for new owners than for existing businesses. Thestudy also finds that the two treatments have selectioneffects, leading to entrants being less analytically skilledand poorer.