This paper studies the use of psychometric tests, designed by the Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (EFL), as a tool to screen out high credit risk and potentially increase access to credit for small business owners in Peru. We use administrative data covering the period from June 2011 to April 2014...

This paper explores the links between labor formality, access to credit and firm performance in Colombia using Annual Manufacturing Survey data for the period 2000-2009. A significant though small relationship is found between access to credit and informality. The results suggest that a 10...

The paper uses microeconomic data to characterize entrepreneurs by income group and selected household, individual and business characteristics, finding that entrepreneurship is rare but more frequent in the upper class than the middle or lower classes. Middle-class entrepreneurs are, on...

Credit has been found to be a catalyst for economic growth, as it spurs investment, enhances productivity, allows costs to be spread out over time, improves resource allocation, and enables investors to cope better with macroeconomic volatility. Most studies focus on the relationship between...

This paper surveys and analyzes industrial policies in Colombia, finding extensive use of productive development policies (PDPs) and despite claims of only moderate government intervention. Rarely explicitly associated with the need to address market failures, PDPs are instead associated with...

This paper describes private actors' involvement in Colombia's policymaking process. While more transparent and formal channels are used to discuss horizontal policies, they are also less effective. The adoption of targeted policies, however, follows a faster track and depends more on political...

This paper uses a yearly dataset of plant-level investment in Colombian firms during the period 1997 to 2007 to assess the impact of a tax incentive for firms that invest in fixed assets implemented in 2004. A positive and statistically significant correlation is found between the boom observed...

This paper evaluates the short-term impacts of a development project that aims to increase mango yields, sales of mango products, and the income of small mango farmers in rural Haiti. Various matching methods, in combination with difference-in-difference (DID), are used to deal with the...

Very little is known about the effectiveness of SME policies, and a careful look at the structure, mechanisms and incentives provided by these policies suggest caution in their implementation and, most importantly, the need to carefully and closely monitor their results. This paper relies on the...

This paper evaluates the impact of the widespread use of fixed-term contracts in Spain on firms' TFP, via its effect on workers' effort. We propose a simple analytical framework showing that, under plausible conditions, workers' effort depends positively on their perception (for given level of...