The impact of business-support services on firm performance: a meta-analysis

Túlio Cravo and Caio Piza

Small Business Economics, 2019, vol. 53, issue 3, No 12, 753-770

Abstract: Abstract Interventions designed to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are popular among policy makers, given the role SMEs play in job creation around the world. Significant resources from governments and international organizations are directed to business-support interventions in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) based on the assumption that market failures and institutional constraints impede SME growth. SME business-support interventions in LMICs most often relate to formalization, business environment, exports, clusters, training, technical assistance, access to credit, and innovation. This paper reviews and summarizes 40 rigorous evaluations of SME-support services in LMICs and presents evidence to inform policy debates pertaining to SMEs and business-support services. We present evidence that business-support interventions improve firm performance and create jobs. However, little is known about which interventions work best for SMEs and why. More rigorous impact evaluations are needed to fill the knowledge gap in the field.

Keywords: SMEs; Impact evaluation; Private sector development; Firm performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J21 J48 L26 O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11187-018-0065-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:53:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s11187-018-0065-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/11187/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11187-018-0065-x

Access Statistics for this article

Small Business Economics is currently edited by Zoltan J. Acs and David B. Audretsch

More articles in Small Business Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().