"This paper tests whether demand shocks affect firm dynamics. Ferraz, Finan and Szerman (2015) examine whether firms that win government procurment contracts grow more compared to firms that compete for these contracts but do not win. They assemble a comprehensive data set combining matched employer-employee data for the universe of formal firms in Brazil with the universe of federal government procurement contracts over the period of 2004 to 2010. Exploiting a quasi-experimental design, they find that winning at least one contract in a given quarter increases firm growth by 2.2 percentage points over that quarter, with 93% of the new hires coming from either unemployment or the informal sector. These effects also persist well beyond the length of the contracts. Part of this persistence comes from firms participating and winning more future auctions, as well as penetrating other markets."

"Women play a key role in the economies of sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, sub-Saharan Africa is the only region where women make up the majority of those who are entrepreneurs. However, a range of impediments render women's businesses less productive and having fewer employees than those owned by men. This new report seeks to focus attention on the challenges that Africa's women entrepreneurs face and identify practical solutions. The report draws on new, high-quality, household and firm level data to present the clearest evidence to date about the barriers to growth and profitability faced by women entrepreneurs. The report offers policy makers evidence-based guidance on designing programs to target multiple obstacles and improve the performance of women entrepreneurs."

"Gender lens investing (GLI) - investing with the goal of making financial returns and a positive impact on women - is on the rise. Stories of new funds and promising investments are shared widely, signaling the growth of this trend. We wanted to know exactly how big the gender lens investing ecosystem is and how fast it is growing. So, in October of 2017 we researched and published Project Sage: a Landscape of Structured Private Equity, Venture Capital, and Private Debt Vehicles with a Gender Lens. Recently, we conducted a second landscape analysis, Project Sage 2.0, to assess the current state of the field and to understand how things had evolved over one year. This report presents the results of our survey and analysis of private equity, debt, and venture capital funds that operate with a gender lens. The landscape captures the field through July 2018, when our data collection for this report ended."

"This whitepaper presents Endeavor's "house view" on proactive ideas and measures that the government, policymakers and business community, who understand the importance of protecting the essential high-growth innovation sector of the Nigerian economy, should consider as we work collectively to minimise the impact of the coronavirus and protect Nigeria's economic future."

"A broad literature has found that the misallocation of entrepreneurial talent has strong effects on productivity. To investigate whether the government can improve entrepreneurial activity, we analyze a policy aimed at promoting innovative startups through the provision of funding and technical assistance to potential entrepreneurs in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We conduct a survey and use regression discontinuity methods to identify the effects of the policy. We find significant effects on enterprise creation and survival as well as on employment. Overall, we show that small-scale public policy can help entrepreneurs overcome a wide variety of barriers to firm entry and improve the allocation of their entrepreneurial talent."

"Given the mixed evidence for the impact of various publicly funded initiatives that aim to foster entrepreneurial activity, this paper empirically examines the efficacy of publicly funded business advisory services in relation to entrepreneurial outcomes. Based on a sample of 228 early-stage firms, of which 101 used business advisory services focused on helping companies secure 1st rounds of financing and start generating revenues, we examine the firm-level impact such services can have on sales growth, innovation, finance and alliances. We find services are positively associated with firms' sales growth, patents, finance and alliances. We assess statistical and economic significance, and assess robustness to controls for the non-randomness of the firm's using business advisory service program, as well as endogeneity of advisors' hours spent with firms. Other robustness checks are also included. We find significant robustness of hours spent on sales and finance, but sensitivity of the effect of hours on patents and alliances after controlling for endogeneity."

"This research aims to quantify the importance of a country's entrepreneurship level in terms of its competitiveness rates. Our hypothesis is that those countries entrepreneurship growth rates increase their competitiveness indicators and that this entrepreneurial improvement could be a key factor in reaching the next stage of development. Our results suggest that Latin American countries need to gain entrepreneurial dynamics and economic (and competitiveness) development by transforming their typical self-employment or low value-added new ventures for local markets into strong, innovative networked firms competing globally. Some management and policy implications are also discussed."

"The idea that start-ups and young firms (hereafter entrepreneurial firms) create jobs is very popular among policy-makers and has led to a large number of studies investigating the effect of entrepreneurship on job creation. Recently, however, society and many players in the political arena have begun to care not only about job quantity and quantitative employment levels, but also about the quality of the jobs created. This study provides the first systematic literature review of research on the quantity and quality of jobs created by entrepreneurial firms. The review concludes with policy implications and avenues for future research."

"This paper examines the impact of improvements in marketing skills relative to finance skills among small-scale entrepreneurs. It addresses three important questions: (1) What is the impact of marketing or finance skills on business profits? (2) How do improvements in marketing and finance skills respectively affect different business outcomes? (3) When are increases in marketing relative to finance skills more beneficial? Through a randomized control study of 852 firms in South Africa, the analysis finds significant improvements in profitability from both types of business skills training. However, the pathways to achieve these gains differ substantially between the two groups. The marketing group achieves greater profits by adopting a growth focus on higher sales, greater investments in stock and materials, and hiring more employees. The finance group achieves similar profit gains but through an efficiency focus on lower costs. Both groups show significantly higher adoption of business practices related to their respective training program. Consistent with a growth focus, marketing/sales skills are significantly more beneficial to businesses run by entrepreneurs with ex ante less exposure to different market contexts. In contrast and in line with an efficiency focus, it is the more established businesses that benefit significantly more from finance/accounting skills."

"This guide aims to help early-stage innovators develop business models and partnership approaches that align with the development of their product, and envision potential pathways for bringing products to scale. While many concepts and insights in this guide apply to all global health innovations, our focus is on medical devices and products, rather than drugs, commodities, or service-delivery models."