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

David McKenzie and Olga Susana Puerto ()
Additional contact information
Olga Susana Puerto: Youth Employment Network (UN, ILO, World Bank)

No 10615, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: A common concern with efforts to directly help some small businesses to grow is that their growth comes at the expense of their unassisted competitors. We test this possibility using a two-stage randomized experiment in Kenya which randomizes business training at the market level, and then within markets to selected businesses. Three years after training, the treated businesses are selling more, earn higher profits, and their owners have higher well-being. There is no evidence of negative spillovers on the competing businesses, and the markets as a whole appear to have grown in terms of number of customers and sales volumes. This market growth appears to come from enhanced customer service and new product introduction, generating more customers and more sales from existing customers. As a result, business growth in underdeveloped markets is possible without taking sales away from non-treated businesses.

Keywords: business training; spillovers; microenterprise; market development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 L26 O12 O17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 55 pages
Date: 2017-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-ent, nep-mfd and nep-mkt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Published - published in: American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2021 13 (2), 297-332

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Journal Article: Growing Markets through Business Training for Female Entrepreneurs: A Market-Level Randomized Experiment in Kenya (2021)
Working Paper: Growing markets through business training for female entrepreneurs: a market-level randomized experiment in Kenya (2017)
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