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Abstract:
Is investment constrained more by insecure property rights or by limited external finance; For five transition economies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union we find that weak property rights limit the reinvestment of profits in startup manufacturing firms. Access to credit does not appear to explain differences in investment. At least in the early stages of post-communist reform, retained earnings appear to have been enough to finance the investments that managers wanted to make.

Abstract:
Does access to capital lead to more robust investment in small scale enterprises in developing economies? We examine the effect of capital constraints on investment levels of microenterprises in Mexico. We use a survey of more than 6000 small firms located in 44 urban areas of Mexico. We focus on one important source of investment capital for Mexican entrepreneurs: earnings from migration by the owner or family members working in the United States. We estimate that remittances are responsible for almost 20% of the capital invested in microenterprises throughout urban Mexico, an additional cumulative investment capital among the firms represented by our sample of about $1.85 billion. Within the ten states with the highest rate of migration to the United States, we estimate that almost than a third of the capital invested in microenterprises is associated with remittances. In additional to showing the importance of remittances in microenterprise development, the findings suggest that access to capital is an important factor in enterprise development.

Capital constraints, Migration, remittances, microenterprise finance

Abstract:
Which is the tighter constraint on private sector investment: weak property rights or limited access to external finance? From a survey of new firms in post-communist countries, we find that weak property rights discourage firms from reinvesting their profits, even when bank loans are available. Where property rights are relatively strong, firms reinvest their profits; where they are relatively weak, entrepreneurs do not want to invest from retained earnings.

Abstract:
Which is the tighter constraint on private sector investment: weak property rights or limited access to external finance? From a survey of new firms in post-communist countries, we find that weak property rights discourage firms from reinvesting their profits, even when bank loans are available. Where property rights are relatively strong, firms reinvest their profits; where they are relatively weak, entrepreneurs do not want to invest from retained earnings.

Abstract:
Post-communist countries offer new evidence on the relative importance of courts and relationships in enforcing contracts. Belief in the effectiveness of courts has a significant positive effect on the level of trust shown in new relationships between firms and their customers. Well-functioning courts also encourage entrepreneurs to try out new suppliers. Courts are particularly important when specific investments are needed for a relationship to develop. While relationships can sustain existing interactions, workable courts help new interactions to start and develop.

Abstract:
Post-communist countries offer new evidence on the relative importance of courts and relationships in enforcing contracts. Belief in the effectiveness of courts has a significant positive effect on the level of trust shown in new relationships between firms and their customers. Well-functioning courts also encourage entrepreneurs to try out new suppliers. Courts are particularly important when specific investments are needed for a relationship to develop. While relationships can sustain existing interactions, workable courts help new interactions to start and develop.

Abstract:
Post-communist countries offer new evidence on the relative importance of courts and relationships in enforcing contracts. Belief in the effectiveness of courts has a significant positive effect on the level of trust shown in new relationships between firms and their customers. Well-functioning courts also encourage entrepreneurs to try out new suppliers. Courts are particularly important when specific investments are needed for a relationship to develop. While relationships can sustain existing interactions, workable courts help new interactions to start and develop.

Abstract:
Using a survey of private firms in Vietnam, we examine how ongoing relationships serve information-provision and contract-enforcement purposes, substituting for absent market infrastructure. We find that ongoing relationships work when firms face high costs in finding alternative trading partners; the firms have access to information about their trading partners from other firms or from family members; and community sanctions are invoked if the trading partner reneges on the deal. Ongoing relationships have costs, however, in that inefficient matches can persist. These networks develop quite easily in response to the need for some contracting assurance; they need not be based on family ties.

Abstract:
A survey of private firms in Vietnam is used in this paper to examine ongoing interfirm relationships; this survey gives detailed data on a firm's relationships with specific trading partners. We take as our measure of a firm's trust in its trading partner the amount of trade credit it grants. Bilateral relationships between trading partners are embedded in two kinds of networks: one based on pre-existing ties of family or friendship, the other on communication among manufacturers of similar types of goods.

While we find that reputation is a workable basis for contracting in Vietnam, we also find some shortcomings of the informal mechanisms. Small firms rely more heavily than large firms on family connections and on gossip from the customer's other trading partners. Firms dependent on trading partners run by family members grow slowly. These observations suggest that to be successful, rather than just to survive, a firm must somehow escape its reliance on the family-based clientelistic links. Interfirm networks remain significant even for large firms, however, in that they use other manufacturers of similar goods as sources of information about new suppliers, suggesting that a network of firms in the same industry, being an open network, does not limit a firm's success in the way that a family network does. Our results are compared to the existing trade credit literature.

Abstract:
People's concern for their own reputation can support contracting between a pair of trading partners when one or both are locked in, and among multiple trading partners in close-knit communities where information flows freely. In communities where people can hide behind their anonymity, private order, if it is to operate at all, must be organized. Private-order organizations in notably diverse settings, from medieval Europe to present-day Mexico, work in similar ways. An organization such as a market intermediary or a trade association disseminates information about contractual breaches and coordinates the community's response to breaches. The usual sanction is to boycott the offender.

In countries making a transition from planned to market economies, private order acts in place of the inadequate legal system. We use data from a survey of firms in five transition economies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to show that in these transition economies social networks and informal gossip substitute for the formal legal system, while business networks and trade associations work in conjunction with the formal legal system.

Abstract:
Education in Mexico expanded rapidly over the past several generations. We use data from the 1994 Gender, Age, Family and Work household survey to document the "anatomy" of Mexico's educational expansion. The survey is to our knowledge the first in Mexico that also gathered additional data on characteristics of the household of origin, including parent's education and occupation, sibship size and the birth order of the respondent. Using cohorts created from the survey, we detail patterns of educational attainment and intergenerational mobility in Mexico during the past four decades. By several measures, we find that intergenerational educational mobility has increased over time. Younger cohorts are more likely than older cohorts to have surpassed their parents' schooling levels. The correlation between the education levels of parents and their offspring has fallen in past four decades. Overall, the correlations suggest that there is slightly less intergenerational mobility in Mexico than in the United States. Despite these gains, intergenerational mobility from the lowest to the highest schooling levels remains limited: only one-third of children born to parents with 6 or fewer years of schooling complete high school, compared to four-fifths of children born to parents with 12 or more years of schooling. This gap has narrowed only slightly since the 1960s.

Abstract:
Small and informal firms account for a large share of employment in developing countries. The rapid expansion of microfinance services is based on the belief that these firms have productive investment opportunities and can enjoy high returns to capital if given the opportunity. However, measuring the return to capital is complicated by unobserved factors such as entrepreneurial ability and demand shocks, which are likely to be correlated with capital stock. The authors use a randomized experiment to overcome this problem and to measure the return to capital for the average microenterprise in their sample, regardless of whether they apply for credit. They accomplish this by providing cash and equipment grants to small firms in Sri Lanka, and measuring the increase in profits arising from this exogenous (positive) shock to capital stock. After controlling for possible spillover effects, the authors find the average real return to capital to be 5.7 percent a month, substantially higher than the market interest rate. They then examine the heterogeneity of treatment effects to explore whether missing credit markets or missing insurance markets are the most likely cause of the high returns. Returns are found to vary with entrepreneurial ability and with measures of other sources of cash within the household, but not to vary with risk aversion or uncertainty.

Economic Theory & Research, Investment and Investment Climate, Microfinance, Small Scale Enterprise, Economic Growth

Abstract:
Employment in developing countries is disproportionately concentrated in very small firms. We examine the extent to which the distribution of firm size is related to the quality of the legal system using data from Mexico. We combine Lucas' (1978) model of firm size with Himmelberg, Hubbard and Love's (2001) consideration of idiosyncratic risk in a framework in which the distribution of entrepreneurial talent and aversion to idiosyncratic risk combine to determine the optimal size of firms. Our data allow us to focus on the differential impact of the legal system on proprietorships and corporations. Moreover, by focusing on firms in a single country, the data draw attention to the importance of variation in the administration of justice and the enforcement of legal verdicts. We find that Mexican states with more effective legal systems have larger firms. A one standard deviation improvement in the quality of the legal system increases the average firm size by about 10-15 percent. The impact of the legal system is greatest in sectors in which proprietorships dominate. This pattern is consistent with better legal systems increasing the investment of firm owners by reducing the idiosyncratic risk faced by owners. All of these findings are upheld when we instrument for the institutional variables using the log of indigenous population in 1900 and the active presence of the drug trade in the state.

Abstract:
This paper examines patterns of integration among manufacturers and retails, using data from a survey of footwear manufacturers in Mexico. The property rights framework, developed in papers by Grossman, Hart and Moore, is differentiated from the standard empirical transactions cost framework. In the context of this industry, the most relevant distinction between the two frameworks is that the property rights framework addresses both the benefits and costs of integration, while the transactions cost framework focuses only on variation in the benefits of integration. We show that the costs of integration are highest where the retailer's non-contractible investment has an important effect on the overall profits from the relationship. Consistent with the property rights framework, the data suggest that integration is less likely in these circumstances.

Theory of the firm, Property rights, Grossman/Hart/Moore model, Transactions costs

Abstract:
The rate of assimilation of Latino - and particularly Mexican-America - migrants to the United States has recently become the subject of popular discussion. The discussion has generated a growing interest among academics in examining the assimilation of Latino migrants to the United States, and their offspring (see Trejo 1997, 2003, Blau and Kahn 2004, and Cobb-Clark and Hildebrand 2004 for example). The issue takes on particular salience because of the size of the migratory flow in the past two decades. Nearly 14% of individuals responding to the 2000 U.S. Census identified themselves as being of Latino origin, surpassing African Americans as the largest ethnic group in the country.

By far the largest group of Latinos is of Mexican descent. Data from the 2000 population census show that Mexican-Americans represented 57% of Latino s, and 8% of the population, in 2000. The percentage of Mexican-Americans in the U.S. population increased to 9.2% by March 2004, according to data from the Current Population Survey. If current trends continue, Mexican-Americans will become the largest ethnic or racial group in the United States within the next ten years. A large percentage of Latinos and Mexican-Americans, in particular, were born outside of the United States. Census data indicate that 46% of the Mexican-American population, and 67% of the working age population, were born in Mexico. Conversely, 28% of those born outside the U.S. were born in Mexico.

One area in which Mexican-Americans differ markedly from non-Latino whites is in their rate of business ownership. Rates of self employment are much lower among Mexican-Americans than among non-Latino whites. For example, only 5.7% of Mexican-American men are self-employed compared to 13.3% of non-Latino white men.

The central question we address in this paper is why rates of self employment among Mexican-Americans lag behind rates for non-Latino whites. Despite their weight in the U.S. population, there are only a handful of studies that examine business ownership among Mexican-Americans or Latinos more broadly.

Abstract:
Nearly a quarter of Mexico's workforce is self-employed. In the United States, however, rates of self-employment among Mexican Americans are only 6 percent, about half the rate among non-Latino whites. Using data from the Mexican and U.S. population census, we show that neither industrial composition nor differences in the age and education of Mexican born populations residing in Mexico and the U.S. accounts for the differences in the self-employment rates in the two countries. Within the United States, however, estimates indicate that low levels of education and the youth of Mexican immigrants residing in the United States account for roughly half of the Mexican immigrant/U.S. total difference in self-employment rates for men and the entire difference for women. We also find some suggestive evidence that for both men and women, Mexican immigrant self-employment rates may be higher for those who reside in the United States legally and are fluent in English, and for men, those who live in ethnic enclaves.

entrepreneurship, self-employment, Mexico, Mexican-Americans

Abstract:
Nearly a quarter of Mexico's workforce is self employed. But in the U.S. rates of self employment among Mexican Americans are only 6 percent, about half the rate among non-Latino whites. Using data from the Mexican and U.S. population census, we show that neither industrial composition nor differences in the age and education of Mexican born populations residing in Mexico and the U.S. accounts for the differences in the self employment rates in the two countries. Within the U.S., however, the data show self employment rates are much higher in ethnic enclaves. In PUMAS with a high percentage of residents of Latino origin, rates of self employment are comparable to rates among non-Latino whites. The data also indicate that the lack of English language ability and the lack of legal status among Mexican American immigrants helps account for their lower rates of self employment.

Abstract:
Employment in developing countries is disproportionately concentrated in very small firms. Laeven and Woodruff examine the extent to which the distribution of firm size is related to the quality of the legal system using data from Mexico. They combine Lucas' (1978) model of firm size with Himmelberg, Hubbard, and Love's (2001) consideration of idiosyncratic risk in a framework in which the distribution of entrepreneurial talent and aversion to idiosyncratic risk combine to determine the optimal size of firms. Their data allows them to focus on the differential impact of the legal system on proprietorships and corporations. Moreover, by focusing on firms in a single country, the data draw attention to the importance of variation in the administration of justice and the enforcement of legal verdicts. The authors find that Mexican states with more effective legal systems have larger firms. A one-standard deviation improvement in the quality of the legal system increases the average firm size by about 10-15 percent. The impact of the legal system is greatest in sectors in which proprietorships dominate. This pattern is consistent with better legal systems increasing the investment of firm owners by reducing the idiosyncratic risk they face. All of these findings are upheld when the authors instrument for institutional variables using the log of indigenous population in 1900 and the active presence of the drug trade in the state.

This paper - a product of Financial Sector Operations and Policy Department - is part of a larger effort in the department to study the governance of firms.

Abstract:
Small and informal firms account for a large share of employment in developing countries. The rapid expansion of microfinance services is based on the belief that these firms have productive investment opportunities and can enjoy high returns to capital if given the opportunity. However, measuring the return to capital is complicated by unobserved factors such as entrepreneurial ability and demand shocks, which are likely to be correlated with capital stock. We use a randomized experiment to overcome this problem, and to measure the return to capital for the average microenterprise in our sample, regardless of whether or not they apply for credit. We accomplish this by providing cash and equipment grants to small firms in Sri Lanka, and measuring the increase in profits arising from this exogenous (positive) shock to capital stock. After controlling for possible spillover effects, we find the average real return to capital to be 5.7 percent per month, substantially higher than the market interest rate. We then examine the heterogeneity of treatment effects to explore whether missing credit markets or missing insurance markets are the most likely cause of the high returns. Returns are found to vary with entrepreneurial ability and with measures of other sources of cash within the household, but not to vary with risk aversion or uncertainty.

microenterprises, returns to capital, self-employment

Abstract:
A large share of the world's poor is self-employed. Accurate measurement of profits from microenterprises is therefore critical for studying poverty and inequality, measuring the returns to education, and evaluating the success of microfinance programs. But a myriad of problems plague the measurement of profits. The authors report on a variety of different experiments conducted to better understand the importance of some of these problems and to draw recommendations for collecting profit data. In particular, they (1) examine how far we can reconcile self-reported profits and reports of revenue minus expenses through more detailed questions; (2) examine recall errors in sales and report on the results of experiments which randomly allocated account books to firms; and (3) ask firms how much firms like theirs underreport sales in surveys like this, and have research assistants observe the firms at random times 15-16 times during a month to provide measures for comparison. The authors conclude that firms underreport revenues by about 30 percent, that account diaries have significant effects on both revenues and expenses but not on profits, and that simply asking profits provides a more accurate measure of firm profits than detailed questions on revenues and expenses.

Business in Development, Business Environment, Competitiveness and Competition Policy, Economic Theory & Research, Income

Abstract:
Is investment constrained more by insecure property rights or by limited external finance? For five transition economies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union we find that weak property rights limit the reinvestment of profits in startup manufacturing firms. Access to credit does not appear to explain differences in investment. At least in the early stages of post-communist reform, retained earnings appear to have been enough to finance the investments that managers wanted to make.

Abstract:
Innovation is key to technology adoption and creation, and to explaining the vast differences in productivity across and within countries. Despite the central role of the entrepreneur in the innovation process, data limitations have restricted standard analysis of the determinants of innovation to consideration of the role of firm characteristics. We develop a model of innovation which incorporates the role of both owner and firm characteristics, and use this to determine how product, process, marketing and organizational innovations should vary with firm size and competition. We then use a new large representative survey from Sri Lanka to test this model and to examine whether and how owner characteristics matter for innovation. The survey also allows analysis of the incidence of innovation in micro and small firms, which have traditionally been overlooked in the study of innovation, despite these firms comprising the majority of firms in developing countries. More than one quarter of microenterprises are found to be engaging in innovation, with marketing innovations the most common. As predicted by our model, firm size is found to have a stronger positive effect, and competition a stronger negative effect, on process and organizational innovations than on product innovations. Owner ability, personality traits, and ethnicity are found to have a significant and substantial impact on the likelihood of a firm innovating, confirming the importance of the entrepreneur in the innovation process.

innovation, microenterprises, SMEs, development

Abstract:
Innovation is key to technology adoption and creation, and to explaining the vast differences in productivity across and within countries. Despite the central role of the entrepreneur in the innovation process, data limitations have restricted standard analysis of the determinants of innovation to consideration of the role of firm characteristics. The authors develop a model of innovation that incorporates the role of both owner and firm characteristics, and use this to determine how product, process, marketing, and organizational innovations should vary with firm size and competition. They then use a new, large, representative survey from Sri Lanka to test this model and to examine whether and how owner characteristics matter for innovation. The survey also allows analysis of the incidence of innovation in micro and small firms, which have traditionally been overlooked in the study of innovation, despite these firms comprising the majority of firms in developing countries. The analysis finds that more than one-quarter of the microenterprises are engaging in innovation, with marketing innovations the most common. As predicted by the model, firm size has a stronger positive effect, and competition a stronger negative effect, on process and organizational innovations than on product innovations. Owner ability, personality traits, and ethnicity have a significant and substantial impact on the likelihood of a firm innovating, confirming the importance of the entrepreneur in the innovation process.

E-Business, Education for Development (superceded), Innovation, Labor Policies, Microfinance

Abstract:
This paper analyzes data from a randomized experiment on mean returns to capital in Sri Lankan micro-enterprises. The findings show greater returns among men than among women; indeed, returns were not different from zero for women. The authors explore different explanations for the lower returns among female owners, and find no evidence that the gender gap is explained by differences in ability, risk aversion, or entrepreneurial attitudes. Differential access to unpaid family labor and social constraints limiting sales to local areas are not important. However, there is evidence that women invested grants differently from men. A smaller share of the smaller grants remained in the female-owned enterprises, and men were more likely to spend the grant on working capital and women on equipment. The gender gap is largest when male-dominated sectors are compared with female-dominated sectors, although female returns are lower than male returns even for females working in the same industries as men. The authors examine the heterogeneity of returns to determine whether any group of businesses owned by women benefit from easing capital constraints. The results suggest there is a large group of high-return male owners and a smaller group of poor, high-ability, female owners who might benefit from more access to capital.

Access to Finance, Debt Markets, Gender and Health, Economic Theory & Research

Abstract:
In a recent randomized experiment we found mean returns to capital of between 5 and 6 percent per month in Sri Lankan microenterprises, much higher than market interest rates. But returns were found to be much higher among men than among women, and indeed were not different from zero for women. In this paper, we explore different explanations for the lower returns among female owners. We find no evidence that the gender gap is explained by differences in ability, risk aversion, or entrepreneurial attitudes. Nor do we find that differential access to unpaid family labor or social constraints limiting sales to local areas are important. We do find evidence that women invested the grants differently from men. A smaller share of the smaller grants remained in the female-owned enterprises, and men were more likely to spend the grant on working capital and women on equipment. We also find that the gender gap is largest when we compare male-dominated sectors to female-dominated sectors, although female returns are lower than male returns even for females working in the same industries as men. We then examine the heterogeneity of returns to determine whether any group of businesses owned by women benefit from easing capital constraints. The results suggest there is a large group of high-return male owners and smaller group of poor, high-ability, female owners who might benefit from more access to capital.

microenterprises, gender, microfinance, randomized experiment

Abstract:
Is the vast army of the self-employed in low income countries a source of employment generation? This paper uses data from surveys in Sri Lanka to compare the characteristics of own account workers (non-employers) with wage workers and with owners of larger firms. The authors use a rich set of measures of background, ability, and attitudes, including lottery experiments measuring risk attitudes. Consistent with the International Labor Organization's views of the self employed (represented by Tokman), the analysis finds that two-thirds to three-quarters of the own account workers have characteristics which are more like wage workers than larger firm owners. This suggests the majority of the own account workers are unlikely to become employers. Using a two and a half year panel of enterprises, the authors show that the minority of own account workers who are more like larger firm owners are more likely to expand by adding paid employees. The results suggest that finance is not the sole constraint to growth of microenterprises, and provides an explanation for the low rates of growth of enterprises supported by microlending.

Labor Markets, Tertiary Education, Work & Working Conditions, Microfinance

Abstract:
Despite the rising volume of remittances flowing to developing countries, their impact on banking sector breadth and depth in recipient countries has been largely unexplored. The authors examine this topic using municipio-level data on the fraction of households that receive remittances and on measures of banking breadth and depth for Mexico. They find that remittances are strongly associated with greater banking breadth and depth, increasing the number of branches and accounts per capita and the ratio of deposits to gross domestic product. These effects are significant both statistically and economically, even after conducting robustness tests and addressing the potential endogeneity of remittances.

Access to Finance, Banks & Banking Reform, Population Policies, Debt Markets

Abstract:
Although business ownership has implications for income inequality, wealth accumulation and job creation, surprisingly little research explores why Mexican-Americans are less likely to start businesses and why the businesses that they start are less successful on average than non-Latino whites. We conduct a comprehensive analysis of Mexican-American entrepreneurship using microdata from the 2000 U.S. Census, the matched and unmatched March and Outgoing Rotation Group Files of the Current Population Survey from 1994 to 2004, and the Legalized Population Survey (LPS). We find that low levels of education and wealth explain the entire gap between Mexican immigrants and non-Latino whites in business formation rates. Nearly the entire gap in business income for Mexican immigrants is explained by low levels of education and limited English language ability. Using the natural experiment created by the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), we find that legal status represents an additional barrier for Mexican immigrants. A conservative estimate suggests that the lack of legal status reduces business ownership rates by roughly seven-tenths of a percentage point for both men and women. Human and financial capital deficiencies are found to limit business ownership and business success among second and third-generation Mexican-Americans, but to a lesser extent. These findings have implications for the debates over the selection of immigrants and the assimilation of Mexican-Americans in the U.S. economy.

Mexican-Americans, entrepreneurship, inequality

Abstract:
Is the vast army of the self-employed in low income countries a source of employment generation? We use data from surveys in Sri Lanka to compare the characteristics of own account workers (non-employers) with wage workers and with owners of larger firms. We use a rich set of measures of background, ability, and attitudes, including lottery experiments measuring risk attitudes. Consistent with the ILO's views of the self employed (represented by Tokman), we find that 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the own account workers have characteristics which are more like wage workers than larger firm owners. This suggests the majority of the own account workers are unlikely to become employers. Using a two and a half year panel of enterprises, we show that the minority of own account workers who are more like larger firm owners are more likely to expand by adding paid employees. The analysis suggests that finance is not the sole constraint to growth of microenterprises, and provides an explanation for the low rates of growth of enterprises supported by microlending.

entrepreneurship, self-employment, De Soto

Abstract:
No abstract available.

Abstract:
No abstract available.

Abstract:
No abstract available.

Abstract:
Post-communist countries offer new evidence on the relative importance of courts and relationships in enforcing contracts. Belief in the effectiveness of courts has a significant positive effect on the level of trust shown in new relationships between firms and their customers. Well-functioning courts also encourage entrepreneurs to try out new suppliers. Courts are particularly important when specific investments are needed for a relationship to develop. While relationships can sustain existing interactions, workable courts help new interactions to start and develop.

Abstract:
No abstract available.

Abstract:
The mix of formal and informal mechanisms for contract enforcement is examined using survey data from Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Poland, and Slovakia. Using the size of trade credit to quantify the success of contracting, we ask: Do the courts have a perceptible effect on contracting; When can a firm rely on its customer to repay trade credit voluntarily; Which is more effective, the courts or relational contracting; Do trade associations play a role in contract enforcement; Does relational contracting entail inefficiencies; Is the reliance on relation contracting merely a transitory phenomenon, reflecting the inadequacy of these countries; legal systems?

Abstract:
Vietnam's firms contract without the shadow of the law and only partly in the shadow of the future. Although contracting rests in part on the threat of loss of future business, firms often are willing to renegotiate following a breach, so the retaliation is not as forceful as in the standard repeated-game story and not as effective a sanction. To ensure agreements are kept, firms rely on other devices to supplement repeated-game incentives. Firms scrutinize their trading partners. Community sanctions are occasionally invoked. Transactions with greater risk of reneging are supported by more elaborate governance structures.

Abstract:
A strong theoretical argument for focusing on access to finance is that financial market imperfections can result in large inefficiencies, as firms with productive investment opportunities underinvest. Lack of access to finance is a frequent complaint of microenterprises, which account for a large share of employment in developing countries. However, assessing the extent to which a lack of capital affects their business profits is complicated by the fact that business investment is likely to be correlated with a host of unmeasured characteristics of the owner and firm, such as entrepreneurial ability and demand shocks. In a randomized experiment that gave cash and in-kind grants to small retail firms, providing an exogenous shock to capital, the shock generated large increases in profits, with the effects concentrated among firms that were more financially constrained. The estimated return to capital was at least 20-33 percent a month-three to five times higher than market interest rates.

O17, O16, C93

Abstract:
New firms have been formed at a striking rate in the transition countries, improving welfare by creating jobs, supplying consumer goods, constraining the market power of the state-owned firms, and building political momentum for reform. We summarize evidence on the relative role of entrepreneurs and the state in economic reform. Early in the transition, the government's main contribution to entrepreneurship was to avoid impeding the entrepreneurs' self help. Later, the entrepreneurs came to need positive assistance from the state: institutions to support contracting and finance.

Abstract:
We use survey data to examine new firms in Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Russia and Ukraine. By measures of job growth, security of property, and market development, our countries fall into two groups: an advanced group including Poland, Romania and Slovakia, with Slovakia falling somewhat behind the other two; and a backward group of Russia and Ukraine. Macroeconomic stability is not sufficient for private-sector growth. A lack of bank finance does not seem to prevent private-sector growth. More inhibiting than inadequate finance are insecure property rights.

Abstract:
Our survey of private manufacturing firms finds the size of hidden 'unofficial' activity to be much larger in Russia and Ukraine than in Poland, Slovakia and Romania. A comparison of cross-country averages shows that managers in Russia and Ukraine face higher effective tax rates, worse bureaucratic corruption, greater incidence of mafia protection, and have less faith in the court system. Our firm-level regressions for the three Eastern European countries find that bureaucratic corruption is significantly associated with hiding output.

Corruption, taxation, legal system, unofficial economy

Abstract:
Our survey of private manufacturing firms finds the size of hidden "unofficial" activity to be much larger in Russia and Ukraine than in Poland, Slovakia and Romania. A comparison of cross-country averages shows that managers in Russia and Ukraine face higher effective tax rates, worse bureaucratic corruption, greater incidence of mafia protection, and have less faith in the court system. Our firm-level regressions for the three Eastern European countries find that bureaucratic corruption is significantly associated with hiding output.

Abstract:
This paper investigates how start-up firms in Vietnam operate in the face of two significant market frictions: a poorly developed legal system and inadequate market information. We argue that these two market frictions actually offset each other. Poor market information and the consequent difficulty of locating trading partners can help make self-enforcing contracts workable. Firms that have nowhere else to go will refrain from breaking their agreements. If it is difficult to locate alternative trading partners, firms will invest in maintaining their existing relationships. Our empirical analysis is consistent with this hypothesis.

Abstract:
Using comparable micro-level data from three countries, we ask what type of person works in the informal sector and whether informal workers earn lower wages than observationally equivalent workers in the formal sector. The characteristics of informal workers are similar across countries. Surprisingly, when we control for these personal characteristics, we find a significant wage premium associated with formal employment in El Salvador and Peru but a premium associated with work in the informal sector in Mexico. A model of endogenous selection offers little help in explaining the differences in wage patterns. The research casts doubt on the received wisdom that the informal sector, always and everywhere, is a poorly paid but easily entered refuge for those who have no other employment opportunities.