Can basic entrepreneurship transform the economic lives of the poor?

Oriana Bandiera, Narayan Das, Robin Burgess, Selim Gulesci (), Munshi Sulaiman and Imran Rasul

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The world’s poorest people lack capital and skills and toil for others in occupations that others shun. Using a large-scale and long-term randomized control trial in Bangladesh this paper demonstrates that sizable transfers of assets and skills enable the poorest women to shift out of agricultural labor and into running small businesses. This shift, which persists and strengthens after assistance is withdrawn, leads to a 38% increase in earnings. Inculcating basic entrepreneurship, where severely disadvantaged women take on occupations which were the preserve of non-poor women, is shown to be a powerful means of transforming the economic lives of the poor.

Keywords: asset transfers; capital constraints; vocational training; occupational choice; structural change; poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 53 pages
Date: 2013-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-ent
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (59)

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/58032/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Can Basic Entrepreneurship Transform the Economic Lives of the Poor? (2013)
Working Paper: Can Basic Entrepreneurship Transform the Economic Lives of the Poor? (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:58032

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