Small entrepreneurs in poor countries achieve relatively high marginal returns to capital but show only low re-investment rates. The literature is rather inconclusive about the possible causes. We explore whether ‘forced redistribution’, i.e. abusive demands by the kin, affects the...

We use a representative sample of informal entrepreneurs in Madagascar to add new evidence on the magnitude of the gender performance gap. After controlling for business and entrepreneur characteristics, female-owned businesses exhibit a value added 28 percent lower than their male counterparts....

Using a unique panel of household businesses for Vietnam, this paper sheds light on the links between households’ and entrepreneurs’ social networks and business performance. We address two related questions. One first question asks if we can find evidence of a differentiated effect of...

This paper sheds light on the role of social networks in the dynamics of workers in an urban labour market of a West African country. We examine the extent to which one's network is essential in labour market transitions, in particular from unemployment to employment, from wage employment to...

This paper examines how adverse shocks experienced by households, such as natural disasters, crop or job losses, or deaths, influence the acquisition of human capital of children, in the long run, and investigates whether some periods of childhood appear to be more critical in the sense that...