Field | Before | After |
---|---|---|
Field Study Withdrawn | Before | After No |
Field Intervention Completion Date | Before | After October 14, 2019 |
Field Data Collection Complete | Before | After Yes |
Field Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization) | Before | After 1054 firms: randomization at the firm level |
Field Was attrition correlated with treatment status? | Before | After No |
Field Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations | Before | After 1054 firms (of which 697 were reinterviewed in the follow-up survey) |
Field Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms | Before | After 297 control firms 757 treatment firms |
Field Public Data URL | Before | After https://microdata.worldbank.org/index.php/catalog/4033 |
Field Is there a restricted access data set available on request? | Before | After No |
Field Program Files | Before | After Yes |
Field Program Files URL | Before | After https://microdata.worldbank.org/index.php/catalog/4033 |
Field Data Collection Completion Date | Before | After May 14, 2020 |
Field Is data available for public use? | Before | After Yes |
Field | Before | After |
---|---|---|
Field Paper Abstract | Before | After Why do more small firms in developing countries not use the market for professional business services like accounting, marketing, and human resource specialists? Two key reasons may be that firms lack information about the availability of these services, and that they struggle to distinguish the quality of good versus bad providers. A brand recognition exercise finds that most small firms are unaware of most providers in this market, and a survey of service providers reveals that they largely rely on word-of-mouth and informal reputation mechanisms for acquiring customers. This study set up a business services marketplace that contains information about the different providers present in the market and used mystery shopper visits to develop a quality ratings system. A randomized experiment with more than 1,000 firms provided access to this marketplace to the treatment group and randomized whether firms received just information or also quality ratings. The provision of quality ratings information shifts small firms’ preferences over which provider they would like to use, increasing the average quality rating of their preferred providers by 0.2 to 0.4 ratings points out of 5. However, neither the provision of information nor these quality ratings had any significant impact on the likelihood that small firms go on to hire a business service provider over the subsequent six months. The results suggest that alleviating information frictions alone is insufficient to increase usage of professional business services. |
Field Paper Citation | Before | After Anderson, Stephen and David McKenzie (2021) What Prevents More Small Firms from Using Professional Business Services? An Information and Quality-Rating Experiment in Nigeria. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper no. 9614 |
Field Paper URL | Before | After https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/407751617722646649/pdf/What-Prevents-More-Small-Firms-from-Using-Professional-Business-Services-An-Information-and-Quality-Rating-Experiment-in-Nigeria.pdf |
Field | Before | After |
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Field Paper Abstract | Before | After Many small firms lack the finance and marketing skills needed for growth. A standard approach is to train the entrepreneur in these skills. However, rather than requiring entrepreneurs to learn everything, an alternative is to move beyond the boundary of the entrepreneur and link firms to these skills in a marketplace through insourcing workers, or outsourcing tasks to professionals. We conducted a randomized experiment in Nigeria to test the relative effectiveness of these different approaches to improving business practices. Insourcing and outsourcing both dominate business training; and do at least as well as business consulting at one-half of the cost. |
Field Paper Citation | Before | After Anderson, Stephen and David McKenzie (2022) "Improving business practices and the boundary of the entrepreneur: A randomized experiment comparing training, consulting, insourcing and outsourcing", Journal of Political Economy, 130(1): 157-209, 2022 |
Field Paper URL | Before | After https://doi.org/10.1086/717044 |