Promoting entrepreneurship among migrants and host populations in Colombia

Last registered on January 22, 2025

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Promoting entrepreneurship among migrants and host populations in Colombia
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0014572
Initial registration date
January 17, 2025

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
January 22, 2025, 8:12 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Grupo de Anlisis para el Desarrollo

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Università Bocconi
PI Affiliation
Northwestern University

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2024-10-07
End date
2026-12-30
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to examine whether entrepreneurship training enhances the sustainability and growth of businesses run by migrants in Colombia. We will collaborate with the Ministry of Commerce and USAID's Oportunidades sin Fronteras for the implementation of a randomized controlled trial to study the effects of business and soft-skills training on business outcomes as well as psychometric and household-level outcomes. Additionally, through pre-treatment expectations we will explore how interventions can be better targeted to potential high-growth entrepreneurs. By comparing traditional business training with a combined technical and soft skills approach, the study aims to determine the additional value of soft skills in fostering business success and improving the effectiveness of such programs. The findings will contribute to better targeting and cost-effectiveness of entrepreneurship support initiatives for migrants and other vulnerable populations.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Crosta, Tommaso, Dean Karlan and Martin Valdivia. 2025. "Promoting entrepreneurship among migrants and host populations in Colombia." AEA RCT Registry. January 22. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.14572-1.0
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
We will collaborate with two key organizations in Colombia: The Ministry of Commerce, Industry, and Tourism (through iNNpulsa and Colombia Productiva) and USAID Opportunities without Borders Program (OSF-USAID). These programs include skills training, asset transfers, seed funding, and market access activities. Skills training covers technical and soft skills, though the latter is often informal and not evidence based. Seed funding provides essential business resources based on initial assessments, while market access is facilitated through business fairs and one-on-one connections. The theory of change for these interventions is to provide entrepreneurs with skills to enhance their business models, seed funding to launch and sustain their activities, and market connections to expand their client base. The programs aim to improve income generation.

We consider two treatment arms and a control group. One treatment arm (T1) implies offering a state of the art business training program that can transmit key business practices associated with successful enterprises. The second treatment arm (T2) will combine the transmission of the same business practices as in T1 with the transmission of key soft skills through the open access soft skills curriculum developed by IPA and iNNpulsa. Both treatment arms will include a transfer of assets, tailored for the specific entrepreneur's needs.

Regarding timing, we will organize the three modules (hard skills, soft skills, placebo) homogeneously throughout the training program, so that at any effective exposure, T2 beneficiaries will differentiate from T1 beneficiaries in that the former will include some training on soft skills.
Intervention Start Date
2025-01-06
Intervention End Date
2025-07-20

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Sales, profits, business practices, household income, capital investments, soft skills (personal initiative, grit, and negotation)
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Time use decisions of household members, soft skills, household assets, business survival, business formalization, employment, number of workers, total factor productivity, business loans, commercial partnerships, changes to main products, hours dedicated to business, labor supply, work income, dependent work, mental health (stress), household labor supply, household assets, household debt
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Treatment assignment will be stratified based on the implementer, Ministry (iNNpulsa and Colombia Productiva) and OSF-USAID, cities, population origins (Venezuelan migrants and local population), and individual and business characteristics and individually randomized, with an equal proportion of participants being assigned to each group (Control, T1, and T2). The total sample size will be of around least 1,587 entrepreneurs: 529 in T1, 529 in T2, and 529 in the control group in four cities.

Comparing the treatment group T1 with the control group allows us to evaluate the impact of a traditional business training program and asset transfer over the success of the businesses run by the treated, plus some other key individual and household income indicators. Comparing T2 with the control group allows us to estimate the impact of the full treatment (hard + soft skills + asset transfer). The comparison of T1 and T2 allows us to establish the marginal contribution of the soft skills module. We will conduct follow-up surveys 3 months and one year after the end of the intervention.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer.
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
1587 individuals
Sample size: planned number of observations
1587 individuals
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
529 individuals in the Control group, 529 individuals in Hard Skills Training + Assets transfer, 529 individuals in Hard + Soft Skills Training + Assets transfer.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
0.25 standard deviations for T1 and 0.3 standard deviations for T2.
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Innovations for Poverty Action IRB
IRB Approval Date
2024-10-30
IRB Approval Number
16816
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

Pre-analysis plan

MD5: 0c8e599291339c7a2dcb8c2ff6f30d27

SHA1: cbb041cf49d1b96d5be7815daa8dbeefce354f1e

Uploaded At: January 17, 2025