Access to Finance for MSMEs in Ecuador

This paper studies the impact of a World Bank program aimed at promoting access to finance for micro, small, and medium-size enterprises in Ecuador. A staggered difference-in-differences method is used to estimate the impact of the program on 2,035 participant firms during 2019-23. The findings show that the program had a positive effect on these firms, by boosting their financing, number of workers, short-term assets, and sales. This effect is similar when enterprises are female-led and is larger for firms that had no previous access to finance