doi:https://doi.org/10.1596/41299

Person:
Bruhn, Miriam

Last updated: March 29, 2024

Biography

Miriam Bruhn is a Senior Economist in the Finance and Private Sector Development Team of the Development Research Group. She joined the Bank as a Young Economist in September 2007. Her research interests include the effect of regulatory reform on entrepreneurial activity, the informal sector, micro and small enterprises, financial literacy, and the relationship between institutions and economic development. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT and a B.A. in Economics from Yale University.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 52

Government Support and Firm Performance during COVID-19
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-12-19) Demirguc-Kunt, Asli; Singer, Dorothe; Bruhn, Miriam
This paper assesses the medium-run effects of government support to firms during the COVID-19 crisis and whether the effectiveness of this support varied with its timing. Using data from three rounds of the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys COVID-19 Follow-up Surveys carried out between May 2020 and April 2022, it relates government support in Round 1 (received in the first half of 2020) and Round 2 (received during the second half of 2020 or early 2021) with firm performance in Round 3 (generally mid-2021). Controlling for a host of background characteristics, firms that received support in Round 1 performed better in terms of Round 3 sales, but only if they did not have continued support. Firms that also received support in Round 2 had similar Round 3 sales as those that received no support and were more likely to decrease employment. Firms that received government support only in Round 2 experienced no boost in Round 3 performance. The findings suggest that government support should be provided promptly, but it should also be phased out quickly.
The Long-Term Impact of High School Financial Education: Evidence from Brazil
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-07) Garber, Gabriel; Koyama, Sergio; Zia, Bilal; Bruhn, Miriam
In 2011, the impact of a comprehensive financial education program was studied through a randomized controlled trial with 892 high schools in six Brazilian states. Using administrative data, this paper follows 16,000 students for the next nine years. The short-term findings were that the treatment students used expensive credit and were behind on payments. By contrast, in the long-term, treatment students were less likely to borrow from expensive sources and to have loans with late payments than control students. Treatment students were also more likely to own microenterprises and less likely to be formally employed than control students.
Competition and Firm Recovery Post-COVID-19
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11) Demirguc-Kunt, Asli; Singer, Dorothe; Bruhn, Miriam
This paper examines the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the reallocation of economic activity across firms, and whether this reallocation depends on the competition environment. The paper uses the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys COVID-19 Follow-up Surveys for about 8,000 firms in 23 emerging and developing countries in Europe and Central Asia, matched with 2019 Enterprise Surveys data. It finds that during the COVID-19 crisis, economic activity was reallocated toward firms with higher pre-crisis labor productivity. Countries with a strong competition environment experienced more reallocation from less productive to more productive firms than countries with a weak competition environment. The evidence also suggests that reallocation from low- to high-productivity firms during the COVID-19 crisis was stronger compared with pre-crisis times. Finally, the analysis shows that government support measures implemented in response to the crisis may have adverse effects on competition and productivity growth since support went to less productive and larger firms, regardless of their pre-crisis innovation.
Missing Information: Why Don’t More Firms Seek Out Business Advice?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-10) Piza, Caio; Bruhn, Miriam
Seeking out business advice, for example through classroom training or consulting, can be a profitable investment. Previous research has found that obtaining business advice through classroom training or one-on-one consulting can increase profits and sales, and firms can recover the cost of training in one to three years. Yet, many firms do not take up business training, even when it is heavily subsidized. Anecdotal evidence suggests that one reason for this low take-up is lack of information on business practices and on the benefits of improving these practices. The authors collaborated with the Parana office of the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service (SEBRAE-PR), to test empirically whether providing more information on business practices can lead firms to seek out advice and improve their performance.
Missing Information: Why Don’t More Firms Seek Out Business Advice?
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-09) Piza, Caio; Bruhn, Miriam
This paper tests whether providing more information on business practices can lead firms to seek out advice and improve their practices. The authors collaborated with a business advice provider in Brazil to implement a randomized experiment with 866 small firms. The treatment groups received different versions of an information sheet that benchmarked business practices to other firms and listed five practices to improve. Receiving any information sheet increased demand for business advice by 7 percentage points, relative to 21 percent in the control group in the first six months, suggesting that information matters for seeking out advice. However, the control group catches up over the next 12 months. The intervention did not affect business practices and performance outcomes, but it decreased the fraction of firms that report being happy with their performance.
Design for Impact: A State Aid Evaluation in Romania
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-06-11) Pop, Georgiana; Iootty, Mariana; Ruiz Ortega, Claudia; Bruhn, Miriam
State aid impact evaluation is new in Romania. Given its novelty, the ex post evaluation seeks to provide evidence on how effective state aid has been, on whether state aid distorted competition, and on the implications for state aid design and implementation. These aspects are fundamental to improving the efficiency of public spending and minimizing market distortions. The ex post evaluation focuses on three state aid schemes to assess whether and to what extent the aid objectives have been fulfilled, and it measures their spillover effects as well as the effects on competition outcomes. Selected based on the their importance in supporting key policy objectives, their design and complexity, and the instruments used, the three schemes include de minimis aid implemented by the Romanian Counter-Guarantee Fund and designed to incentivize access to finance for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs); state aid granted by the Ministry of Public Finance to support regional development and job creation; and state aid provided by the Ministry of European Funds to support the upgrade and modernization of research, development, and innovation. The analysis finds evidence that the state aid schemes met their objectives without distorting competition significantly. The results for the de minimis scheme to incentivize access to finance for micro, small, and medium enterprises showed that the scheme increased employment and turnover of beneficiary firms and reduced the probability of aided firms closing. The state aid scheme to support regional development and job creation fulfilled its main objectives, with robust evidence of a positive direct effect on employment creation and, to some extent, on investment. Regarding the state aid scheme to support the upgrade and modernization of research, development, and innovation, the analysis found evidence that the scheme helped promote research and development efforts.
Borrower Leakage from Costly Screening: Evidence from SME Lending in Peru
(Elsevier, 2021-11) Arraiz, Irani; Roth, Benjamin N.; Ruiz-Ortega, Claudia; Stucchi, Rodolfo; Bruhn, Miriam
We provide evidence that commercial lenders in Peru suffer leakages in their loan approval process. Leveraging a discontinuity in the loan approval process of a large bank, we find that receiving a loan approval from the bank causes loan applicants to receive offers from other financial institutions as well. Competing lenders captured almost three quarters of the new loans to previously financially excluded borrowers. Importantly, many of these borrowers never took a loan from our partner bank, even after our partner bank approved them. Lenders may therefore underinvest in screening new borrowers and expanding financial inclusion, as their competitors reap some of the benefit. Our results highlight that information spillovers between lenders may operate outside of credit registries.
The Impact of Mobile Money on Poor Rural Households: Experimental Evidence from Uganda
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-06) Wieser, Christina; Kinzinger, Johannes; Ruckteschler, Christian; Heitmann, Soren; Bruhn, Miriam
Mobile money lowers the costs of financial transactions, making it a promising tool for brining financial services to rural areas. This paper studies the effects of rolling out mobile money agents in poor and remote areas in Northern Uganda. The authors randomly assigned 329 areas to receive an agent in 2017, using 329 areas as a control group. Data from a 2018 household survey and administrative transactions data show little effect of the rollout. Mobile money transactions remained low, suggesting policies focused only on opening mobile money agents will not lead to transformative effects in poor and remote areas.
Can Wage Subsidies Boost Employment in the Wake of an Economic Crisis? Evidence from Mexico
(Taylor and Francis, 2020-01-31) Bruhn, Miriam
This paper measures the employment effect of a program in Mexico that granted firms wage subsidies during the recent economic crisis. I use monthly administrative data at the industry level, along with Euclidean distance matching to construct groups of eligible and ineligible durable goods manufacturing industries that display statistically identical preprogram trends in employment. Difference-in-difference results show a positive but not statistically significant effect of the wage subsidies on employment during the program’s eight-month duration. The size of the effect increases to 18 per cent after the program ended and the results indicate that employment after the program recovered faster in eligible industries than in ineligible industries. Additional analysis suggests that the program did not incentivize firms to retain workers with job-specific skills as originally intended. Instead, the payment of subsidy funds, which only happened towards the end of the program, seems to have provided liquidity for hiring back workers.
Free Riding in Loan Approvals: Evidence from SME Lending in Peru
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12) Arraiz, Irani; Roth, Benjamin N.; Ruiz-Ortega, Claudia; Stucchi, Rodolfo; Bruhn, Miriam
This paper provides evidence that commercial lenders in Peru free ride off their peers' screening efforts. Leveraging a discontinuity in the loan approval process of a large bank, the study finds that competing lenders responded to additional loan approvals by issuing approvals of their own. Competing lenders captured almost three-quarters of the new loans to previously financially excluded borrowers, greatly diminishing the profits accruing to the initiating bank. Lenders may therefore underinvest in screening new borrowers and expanding financial inclusion, as their competitors reap some of the benefit. The results highlight that information spillovers between lenders may operate outside credit registries.