Can Basic Entrepreneurship Transform the Economic Lives of the Poor?

By O. Bandiera, Robin Burgess, N. Das, Selim Gulesci, Imran Rasul, M. Sulaiman. Social Science Research Network, 2013

120 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The world’s poorest people lack capital and skills and toil for others in occupations that others shun. Using a large-scale and long-term randomized control trial in Bangladesh this paper demonstrates that sizable transfers of assets and skills enable the poorest women to shift out of agricultural labor and into running small businesses. This shift, which persists and strengthens after assistance is withdrawn, leads to a 38% increase in earnings. Inculcating basic entrepreneurship, where severely disadvantaged women take on occupations which were the preserve of non-poor women, is shown to be a powerful means of transforming the economic lives of the poor.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f433f2438a3cce91b92ce35b8538c04c8dcc30d4

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Citations in the corpus

Entrepreneurship and Financial Frictions: A Macrodevelopment Perspective (2015, unknown): “Using a randomized control trial in Bangladesh, where the grants were between one and three times annual wages, Bandiera et al. (2013) find that the grants increased entrepreneurship (mainly in livestock rearing) rates by 15 percentage points and earnings by 33 percent.”
Economic Pathways to Women’s Empowerment and Active Citizenship: What Does The Evidence From Bangladesh Tell Us? (2017, methodology): “Using panel data from this phase, Bandiera et al. (2013) reported a substantial increase in women’s annual earnings in participating households.”
THE SHORT-TERM IMPACT OF UNCONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFERS TO THE POOR: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM KENYA (2016, unknown): “…have the perverse effects that some policy makers feel they would have, which has led to a clear policy preference for in-kind or skills transfers (Bandiera et al. 2013; Banerjee et al. 2015a; Brune et al. 2015) and conditional transfers (Sadoulet, Janvry, and Davis 2001; Maluccio and Flores…”
Theories of Poverty Traps and Anti-Poverty Policies (2015, background): “• Indeed, Bandiera et al (2013) find that sizable transfers of assets and training to impart skills in Bangladesh enable the poorest women to shift out of agricultural labor and into running small businesses, which persists and strengthens after assistance is withdrawn, and leads to a 38% increase…”
The Effects of Business Accelerators on Venture Performance: Evidence from Start-Up Chile (2017, result): “This pattern is also consistent with the well-established findings on how interventions that combine finance (especially grants) and business training are more effective in supporting subsistence businesses than finance alone (e.g., Bandiera et al. 2013).”
Promoting Women's Economic Empowerment: What Works? (2014, background): “…one in Andhra Pradesh, yield findings in line with those of Bangladesh, although the simultaneous implementation of a government program for agricultural wage workers confounded the results from the Andhra Pradesh pilot (Banerjee et al. 2011; Morduch, Ravi, and Bauchet 2012; Bandiera et al. 2013a).”
Household Response to Income Changes: Evidence from an Unconditional Cash Transfer Program in Kenya ∗ (2013, background): “2013), conditional cash transfers (Banerjee et al. 2010; Brune et al. 2011; Bandiera et al. 2013), and unconditional cash transfers (Blattman, Fiala, and Martinez 2013; Cunha, De Giorgi, and Jayachandran 2011) have positive effects on consumption, income, and other welfare measures.”