Evaluations

A lack of access to finance can impede the potential for growth among small firms. To meet this finance gap and to encourage high-growth entrepreneurship, governments and multilateral agencies throughout the developing world often directly fund small and medium enterprises. Governments, however...

Researchers evaluated the impact of providing easy-to-remember and easy-to-adopt rules of thumb to microentrepreneurs in India in order to help improve their businesses performance.

Researchers evaluated the impact of enabling Filipino migrants to label remittances for education on the amount of money they sent home. Labeling remittances as funds to be used for education raised the amount of money migrants sent home substantially (over 15 percent).

In Ghana, researchers evaluated the impact of performance pay on worker productivity. They found that neither individual nor group incentives impacted productivity, work quality, or firm profitability.

Researchers partnered with a tea company in Malawi to study the effects of a savings product that allowed workers to defer payment of a part of their wages. The deferred wages program was generally popular and increased savings; in the longer run, it helped workers improve their houses.

Researchers used data on lottery winners in Sweden to determine whether receiving an influx of cash affected the labor supply decisions of winners and their spouses. They found that lottery winners reduced their labor supply, suggesting that cash transfers can have an effect on labor market outcomes...

Researchers present results from six randomized control trials of an integrated approach to improve livelihoods among the very poor. The impact on the poor households lasted at least a year after all implementation ended.

To test this theory, researchers in six countries evaluated a multi-faceted approach aimed at improving long term income of low-income households. They found that the approach had long-lasting economic and self-employment impacts and that the long-run benefits, measured in terms of household...