| Field | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Field Last Published | Before March 23, 2021 05:08 PM | After March 23, 2021 05:17 PM |
| Field Study Withdrawn | Before | After No |
| Field Intervention Completion Date | Before | After May 15, 2018 |
| Field Data Collection Complete | Before | After Yes |
| Field Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization) | Before | After 753 firms |
| Field Was attrition correlated with treatment status? | Before | After No |
| Field Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations | Before | After 753 firms in the experiment 667 firms in round 1 follow-up 648 firms in round 2 follow-up |
| Field Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms | Before | After 152 insourcing, 150 outsourcing, 152 training, 149 consulting, and 149 control firms |
| Field Is there a restricted access data set available on request? | Before | After No |
| Field Program Files | Before | After No |
| Field Data Collection Completion Date | Before | After October 31, 2019 |
| Field Is data available for public use? | Before | After No |
| Field | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Field Paper Abstract | Before | After Many small firms lack the finance and marketing skills needed for firm growth. The standard approach in many business support programs is to attempt to train the entrepreneur to develop these skills, through classroom-based training or personalized consulting. However, rather than requiring the entrepreneur to be a jack-of-all-trades, an alternative is to move beyond the boundary of the entrepreneur and link firms to these skills in a marketplace through insourcing workers with functional expertise or outsourcing tasks to professional specialists. We conducted a randomized experiment in Nigeria to test the relative effectiveness of these four different approaches to improving business practices. We find that insourcing and outsourcing both dominate business training; and do at least as well as business consulting at one-half of the cost. Moving beyond the entrepreneurial boundary enables firms to use higher quality digital marketing practices, innovate more, and achieve greater sales and profits growth over a two-year horizon. |
| Field Paper Citation | Before | After Anderson, Stephen and David McKenzie (2020) "Improving business practices and the boundary of the entrepreneur: A randomized experiment comparing training, consulting, insourcing and outsourcing", World Bank Policy Research Working Paper no. 9502. December 2020 |
| Field Paper URL | Before | After https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/377351608212969114/improving-business-practices-and-the-boundary-of-the-entrepreneur-a-randomized-experiment-comparing-training-consulting-insourcing-and-outsourcing |