The Returns to Microenterprise Support among the Ultrapoor: A Field Experiment in Postwar Uganda

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Blattman, Christopher; Green, Eric P.; Jamison, Julian; Lehmann, M. Christian; Annan, Jeannie
• 署名单位: Columbia University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Duke University; The World Bank; Universidade de Brasilia
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-APPLIED ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7782
• DOI: 10.1257/app.20150023
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 35-64
• 关键词: cash transfers; entrepreneurship

摘要

We show that extremely poor, war-affected women in northern Uganda have high returns to a package of $150 cash, five days of business skills training, and ongoing supervision. Sixteen months after grants, participants doubled their microenterprise ownership and incomes, mainly from petty trading. We also show these ultrapoor have too little social capital, but that group bonds, informal insurance, and cooperative activities could be induced and had positive returns. When the control group received cash and training 20 months later, we varied supervision, which represented half of the program costs. A year later, supervision increased business survival but not consumption.