"This report is based upon discussions that took place during the webinar “Farmer and FInance: The Widening Gap”, which focused on the challenges and opportunities smallholder farmers face in accessing finance. The event was a virtual roundtable discussion with the participation of companies that work with smallholder farmers. Beyond financing, this report examines other challenges in working with smallholders who are part of large-scale agricultural value chains, based on the outcomes of the event and individual interviews with Business Call to Action member companies."

"We organized business associations for the owner-managers of young Chinese firms to study the effect of business networks on firm performance. We randomized 2,820 firms into small groups whose managers held monthly meetings for one year, and into a "no-meetings" control group. We find the following. (i) The meetings increased firm revenue by 8.1%, and also significantly increased profit, factors, inputs, the number of partners, borrowing, and a management score. (ii) These effects persisted one year after the conclusion of the meetings. (iii) Firms randomized to have better peers exhibited higher growth. We exploit additional interventions to document concrete channels. (iv) Managers shared exogenous business-relevant information, particularly when they were not competitors, showing that the meetings facilitated learning from peers. (v) Managers created more business partnerships in the regular than in other one-time meetings, showing that the meetings improved supplier-client matching."

"The International Development Working Group brought together development practitioners and investors to explore the ways in which the changing landscape of development is creating new opportunities for effective partnerships to drive improvement in social outcomes. The Working Group assessed how impact investment can help to further drive economic development and improvement on social issues in developing countries. Working Group members agree that there is an opportunity for impact investment, in conjunction with public, private and philanthropic capital, to bring greater effectiveness, innovation, accountability and scale to address some of the world's toughest challenges. The group presents in this report its key recommendations on some proposed joint initiatives to advance the impact investing market for the benefit of the world's poor populations."

"The International Organization for Cooperation in Evaluation (IOCE) curates a list of local evaluation associations by country."

"Understanding what works to improve youth labour market outcomes is of paramount importance and a development priority for all countries and regions. Youth represent a vast potential for inclusive growth and development. If they are given the opportunity to build appropriate skills and access decent employment, they can help to accelerate progress on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and engage in meaningful work that benefits them, their families and society as a whole. Unfortunately, decent jobs are not a feasible prospect for all young women and men. Today, over 73 million young people are unemployed worldwide. Youth unemployment stands at a much higher level than the average unemployment rate for adults, in some cases over three times as high. Moreover, two out of five young people in the labour force are either working but poor or unemployed. The youth employment challenge is therefore not only about job creation, but also - and especially - about enhancing the quality of jobs for youth."

"This resource gives an overview and non-technical introduction to randomized evaluations. Randomized evaluations can be used to measure impact in policy research: to date, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) affiliated researchers have conducted more than 1,000 randomized evaluations studying policies in ten thematic sectors in more than 80 countries. This resource highlights work from a variety of contexts, including studies on youth unemployment in Chicago, a subsidized rice program in Indonesia, and a conditional cash transfer in Mexico. It includes guidance on when randomized evaluations can be most useful, and also discusses when they might not be the right choice as an evaluation method."

"Our new study builds on Dalberg's 2012 "Catalyzing Smallholder Agricultural Finance". It provides a sophisticated picture of how the smallholder finance space currently operates by describing the key actors and the nature of their interactions, and conceptualizing these in a new "industry model." The study identifies market frictions across the major components of the “industry model” that continue to inhibit smallholder farmers’ access to financial services and opportunities for removing them, and rallies sector actors around the need for more collective action than ever before."

"We mailed brochures to 10,000 randomly chosen employed German workers eligible for a subsidized occupational training program called WeGebAU, informing them about the importance of skill-upgrading occupational training in general and about WeGebAU in particular. Using survey and register data, we estimate effects of the information treatment brochure on awareness of the program, on take-up of WeGebAU and other training, and on subsequent employment. The brochure more than doubles awareness of the program. There are no effects on WeGebAU take-up but participation in other (unsubsidized) training increases among employees aged below 45. Short-term labor market outcomes are not affected."

"This study creates a taxonomy of startup assistance organizations and provides a working definition of an innovation accelerator that departs from those found in the existing literature. Previous definitions have highlighted accelerators' services and focus on software applications as key characteristics of the definition. The proposed taxonomy distinguishes accelerators from other startup assistance organizations based on the organization's value proposition and business model, both of which are influenced significantly by the accelerator's technology focus and the founder's motivation for starting. Through this taxonomy, three categories of startup assistance organizations are identified: (1) incubators and venture development organizations, (2) proof-of-concept centers, and (3) accelerators. Accelerators are further subdivided into social accelerators, university accelerators, corporate accelerators, and innovation accelerators."

"Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) is the buzz word that we hear in today's agriculture across the world. It deals with climate smart practices to be adopted in tune with the weather without foregoing sustainability and profitability. Various innovations and entrepreneurship pathways are described in the chapter with a main aim of promoting CSA especially among most vulnerable small holder farmers in South Asia."