Selection or More Capital ? Experimental Evidence on High-Growth Entrepreneurs in Kenya

Francisco Campos, Abla Safir, Celine Koffka, David McKenzie and Bilal Zia

No 11432, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Business plan competitions aim to identify and spur high-growth entrepreneurs. Two experiments were embedded into in a Kenyan competition to test how intensity of selection and of capital determine entrepreneurial outcomes. Applicants received a US$9,000 grant after a streamlined process or went through multiple selection stages and were randomly assigned US$9,000 or US$36,000. All grants initially generated jobs, but the impacts only persisted over three years under multi-stage selection. The larger grants did not yield greater long-term impacts than the multi-stage US$9,000 grant, suggesting diminishing returns to capital and limited lumpy investment opportunities. Selection, rather than grant size, determines long-run firm growth.

Date: 2026-07-27
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/0991580 ... 708-1fcebf110c93.pdf (application/pdf)

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:wbk:wbrwps:11432

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().