Publication:
Mitigating the Impact of Household Expropriation on Female Entrepreneurship: Experimental Evidence from Ghana

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files in English
English PDF (2.11 MB)
42 downloads
English Text (162.72 KB)
13 downloads
Date
2025-05-02
ISSN
Published
2025-05-02
Author(s)
Campos, Francisco
Conconi, Adriana
Gassier, Marine
Editor(s)
Abstract
How do intrahousehold dynamics affect the investment of female entrepreneurs? This paper presents findings from a randomized controlled trial in Ghana that assesses the impacts of four alternative support mechanisms on women-owned businesses: (a) an unconditional grant provided through a mobile money account equivalent to two months of median profits, (b) an unconditional grant disbursed to the female entrepreneurs’ spouses in similar conditions; (c) a grant conditional on participating with their spouses in a training on joint decision-making; and (d) a grant conditional on reaching a savings goal under a dedicated bank account. In line with Fafchamps et al. (2014), the study finds no impacts of the unconditional grants on the business performance of female entrepreneurs. The disbursement to the spouse also has no impact on the sales, profits, or investment of female entrepreneurs. Although there is no evidence that the allocation of resources within households is efficient, the joint decision-making intervention leads to increased household support for the women’s businesses but does not impact business performance. The savings support mechanism leads to a 15 percent increase in sales and a 10 percent increase in profits. These effects are largest among female entrepreneurs who faced high expropriation pressure at baseline. This subgroup obtains a 29 percent increase in sales and a 23 percent increase in profits. The paper tests for alternative mechanisms, including self-control issues, liquidity constraints, and access to savings, but these do not explain the results. The findings substantiate that intrahousehold dynamics matter for women’s investment decisions, and highlight the importance of promoting autonomy in the face of expropriation pressures, for increased growth and investment.
Link to Data Set
Citation
Campos, Francisco; Conconi, Adriana; Davies, Elwyn; Gassier, Marine; Goldstein, Markus. 2025. Mitigating the Impact of Household Expropriation on Female Entrepreneurship: Experimental Evidence from Ghana. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/43153 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
Associated URLs
Associated content
Report Series
Report Series
Other publications in this report series
  • Publication
    Geopolitics and the World Trading System
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-23) Mattoo, Aaditya; Ruta, Michele; Staiger, Robert W.
    Until the beginning of this century, the GATT/WTO system worked. Economic research provided a compelling explanation. It showed that if governments maximize the well-being of their own countries broadly defined, GATT/WTO principles would facilitate mutually beneficial cooperation over their trade policy choices. Now heightened geopolitical rivalry seems to have undermined the WTO. A simple transposition of the previous rationalization suggests that geopolitics and trade cooperation are not compatible. The paper shows that this is only true if rivalry eclipses any consideration of own-country well-being. In all other circumstances, there are gains from trade cooperation even with geopolitics. Furthermore, the WTO’s relevance is in question only if it adheres too rigidly to its existing rules and norms. Through measured adaptation to the geopolitical imperative, the WTO can continue to thrive as a forum for multilateral trade cooperation in the age of geopolitics.
  • Publication
    The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29) Abalo, Kodzovi; Boehlert, Brent; Bui, Thanh; Burns, Andrew; Castillo, Diego; Chewpreecha, Unnada; Haider, Alexander; Hallegatte, Stephane; Jooste, Charl; McIsaac, Florent; Ruberl, Heather; Smet, Kim; Strzepek, Ken
    Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.
  • Publication
    Global Poverty Revisited Using 2021 PPPs and New Data on Consumption
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-05) Foster, Elizabeth; Jolliffe, Dean Mitchell; Ibarra, Gabriel Lara; Lakner, Christoph; Tettah-Baah, Samuel
    Recent improvements in survey methodologies have increased measured consumption in many low- and lower-middle-income countries that now collect a more comprehensive measure of household consumption. Faced with such methodological changes, countries have frequently revised upward their national poverty lines to make them appropriate for the new measures of consumption. This in turn affects the World Bank’s global poverty lines when they are periodically revised. The international poverty line, which is based on the typical poverty line in low-income countries, increases by around 40 percent to $3.00 when the more recent national poverty lines as well as the 2021 purchasing power parities are incorporated. The net impact of the changes in international prices, the poverty line, and new survey data (including new data for India) is an increase in global extreme poverty by some 125 million people in 2022, and a significant shift of poverty away from South Asia and toward Sub-Saharan Africa. The changes at higher poverty lines, which are more relevant to middle-income countries, are mixed.
  • Publication
    Geopolitical Fragmentation and Friendshoring
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-26) Grover, Arti; Vézina, Pierre-Louis
    This paper examines the relationship between geopolitical fragmentation and friendshoring of foreign investments over time, countries, and sectors. The analysis uses comprehensive data on foreign direct investments covering greenfield projects, mergers and acquisitions, and stocks of affiliates, as well as data on four alternative measures of geopolitical distance between countries. The gravity estimations suggest that, first, geopolitical differences have a negative effect on foreign investments and the magnitude has heightened in the post-pandemic period compared to a decade ago. Second, it is primarily the companies from advanced Western economies whose foreign investment decisions are increasingly shaped by friendshoring forces. Finally, the paper shows that friendshoring is not only confined to strategic industries, implying that allocations of foreign direct investments may not solely reflect national security or resilience considerations.
  • Publication
    A Global Assessment of Domestic Petroleum Fuel Prices
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-26) Akcura, Elcin
    Oil prices have been increasingly volatile since 2004. However, the impact of this volatility on domestic end-user prices differs significantly by fuel and country. Some countries fully pass through global price movements to domestic end-user prices, and some countries freeze domestic fuel prices for long periods of time. Fuel subsidies emerge or grow if domestic prices significantly diverge from international prices in times of rising international oil prices. This paper draws on two new databases developed by the author for the purposes of this paper to analyze the degree of pass-through of international price volatility onto domestic consumers for eight fuels between December 2017 and December 2023 for up to 125 economies, depending on the fuel. This period saw significant oil price volatility on account of events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The paper finds that domestic prices in many countries did not follow international fuel prices within the period analyzed. Countries with price controls had much lower levels of pass-through than those with price deregulation. Countries that adjusted their fuel prices at frequent intervals (weekly or monthly) had higher levels of price pass-through than those adjusting them quarterly or less frequently. Currency depreciation and the existence of an official fuel subsidy are associated with lower levels of price pass-through, and the impact of being a net crude oil or net refined fuel exporter is mixed. The results show that not tracking international prices closely is associated with higher incidences of fuel shortages, fuel smuggling, and fuel black marketing.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Publication
    Learning from the Experiments That Never Happened : Lessons from Trying to Conduct Randomized Evaluations of Matching Grant Programs in Africa
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-12) Campos, Francisco; Coville, Aidan; Fernandes, Ana M.; Goldstein, Markus; McKenzie, David
    Matching grants are one of the most common policy instruments used by developing country governments to try to foster technological upgrading, innovation, exports, use of business development services and other activities leading to firm growth. However, since they involve subsidizing firms, the risk is that they could crowd out private investment, subsidizing activities that firms were planning to undertake anyway, or lead to pure private gains, rather than generating the public gains that justify government intervention. As a result, rigorous evaluation of the effects of such programs is important. The authors attempted to implement randomized experiments to evaluate the impact of seven matching grant programs offered in six African countries, but in each case were unable to complete an experimental evaluation. One critique of randomized experiments is publication bias, whereby only those experiments with "interesting" results get published. The hope is to mitigate this bias by learning from the experiments that never happened. This paper describes the three main proximate reasons for lack of implementation: continued project delays, politicians not willing to allow random assignment, and low program take-up; and then delves into the underlying causes of these occurring. Political economy, overly stringent eligibility criteria that do not take account of where value-added may be highest, a lack of attention to detail in "last mile" issues, incentives facing project implementation staff, and the way impact evaluations are funded, and all help explain the failure of randomization. Lessons are drawn from these experiences for both the implementation and the possible evaluation of future projects.
  • Publication
    Breaking the Metal Ceiling
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-12) Campos, Francisco; Goldstein, Markus; McGorman, Laura; Munoz Boudet, Ana Maria; Pimhidzai, Obert
    A range of reasons is cited to explain gender differences in business performance in Africa. Within those, the sector of operations is consistently identified as a major issue. This paper uses a mixed methods approach to assess how women entrepreneurs in Uganda start (and strive) operating firms in male-dominated sectors, and what hinders other women from doing so. The study finds that women who cross over into male-dominated sectors make as much as men, and three times more than women who stay in female-dominated sectors. The paper examines a set of factors to explain the differences in sector choices, and finds that there is a problem of information about opportunities in male-dominated industries. The analysis also concludes that psychosocial factors, particularly the influence of male role models and exposure to the sector from family and friends, are critical in helping women circumvent or overcome the norms that undergird occupational segregation.
  • Publication
    Short-Term Impacts of Formalization Assistance and a Bank Information Session on Business Registration and Access to Finance in Malawi
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-01) Campos, Francisco; Goldstein, Markus; McKenzie, David
    Despite regulatory efforts designed to make it easier for firms to formalize, informality remains extremely high among firms in Sub-Saharan Africa. In most of the region, business registration in a national registry is separate from tax registration. This paper provides initial results from an experiment in Malawi that randomly allocated firms into a control group and three treatment groups: a) a group offered assistance for costless business registration; b) a group offered assistance with costless business registration and (separate) tax registration; and c) a group offered assistance for costless business registration along with an information session at a bank that ended with the offer of business bank accounts. The study finds that all three treatments had extremely large impacts on business registration, with 75 percent of those offered assistance receiving a business registration certificate. The findings offer a cost-effective way of getting firms to formalize in this dimension. However, in common with other studies, information and assistance has a limited impact on tax registration. The paper measures the short-term impacts of formalization on financial access and usage. Business registration alone has no impact for either men or women on bank account usage, savings, or credit. However, the combination of formalization assistance and the bank information session results in significant impacts on having a business bank account, financial practices, savings, and use of complementary financial products.
  • Publication
    Informal Firms in Mozambique
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06) Aga, Gemechu; Campos, Francisco; Conconi, Adriana; Davies, Elwyn; Geginat, Carolin
    In most countries in Africa, the informal sector is large and exhibits low levels of productivity compared to the formal economy: informal firms are typically small, inefficient, and run by entrepreneurs with low levels of education. This paper presents novel representative firm-level data collected on informal firms in the three largest cities of Mozambique, as well as data of microenterprises, formally registered businesses with less than 5 employees, the segment of the private sector that compares best to informal firms. Compared to formal microenterprises, informal firms sell about 14 times less, make 17 times lower profits and are 2–3 times less productive. Almost two-thirds (61 percent) of these performance gaps can be explained by differences in firm characteristics: informal firms are smaller and have limited skills, adapt fewer good business practices, use less capital and production inputs and are less likely to have access to finance. The rest of the productivity gap is explained by differential returns. Despite this “duality” between formality and informality, there is nevertheless a small but significant group of informal enterprises (7.6 percent of informal firms, representing 10.6 percent of employment in the informal sector) that in their characteristics and productivity levels are similar to formal microenterprises. Policies should take this heterogeneity into account.
  • Publication
    Are Firm Capabilities Holding Back Firms in Mozambique?
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06) Aga, Gemechu; Campos, Francisco; Conconi, Adriana; Davies, Elwyn; Geginat, Carolin
    Firm capabilities—the abilities and practices to operate and innovate—are considered important drivers of firm performance. While the analysis of their importance is well established in developed countries, its study in the African context is more recent. The paper uses a new representative sample of enterprises in Mozambique comprising data on management and organizational practices, as well as skills, to study the importance of firm capabilities in Mozambique. The analysis suggests that the private sector in Mozambique scores below other developing countries in all dimensions of firm capabilities. Enterprises engaging in more contractual relationships demonstrate stronger firm capabilities. Firm capabilities are key drivers of performance; controlling for other input factors, firms in Mozambique with better firm capabilities perform better. The relationship is robust to various measures of performance and to including various firm and manager characteristics. The analysis finds that for smaller firms, non-exporters, and female-owned enterprises, their gap in business performance can be explained by differences in management practices. The results suggest Mozambique should explore mechanisms of expanding firm capabilities in targeted types of firms.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

  • Publication
    South Asia Development Update, April 2025: Taxing Times
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-04-23) World Bank
    Growth prospects for South Asia have dimmed. The global economic environment has become more challenging and is a source of heightened downside risks. After a decade of repeated disruptions, South Asia’s buffers to cushion new shocks are slim. Tackling some of its greatest inefficiencies and vulnerabilities could help South Asia navigate this unusually uncertain outlook: unproductive agricultural sectors, dependence on energy imports, pressures from rising global temperatures, and fragile fiscal positions. For most South Asian countries, increased revenue mobilization is a prerequisite for strengthening fiscal positions. Even taking into account the particular challenges of collecting taxes in South Asian economies—such as widespread informal economic activity and large agriculture sectors—South Asian economies face larger tax gaps than the average emerging market and developing economy (EMDE). This suggests the need for improved tax policy and administration. Until fiscal positions have strengthened, the burden of climate adaptation will disproportionately fall on the private sector. If allowed sufficient flexibility, private sector adaptation could offset about one-third of the likely climate damage by 2050. This may, however, require governments to remove obstacles that prevent workers and firms from moving across locations and activities. As growth prospects dim, the challenge grows to create jobs for South Asia’s rapidly expanding working-age population. South Asia’s large diasporas could become a source of strength if their knowledge, networks, and other resources can be better tapped for investment and trade.
  • Publication
    Infrastructure Monitor 2024
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-04-28) World Bank
    The Infrastructure Monitor report covers global trends in private investment in infrastructure to inform investors, policy-makers and other practitioners. The objective is to deliver global insights on global infrastructure trends across key topics such as investment volumes, performance, blended finance, and ESG drivers, facilitating the monitoring of private infrastructure investment and its performance. These insights aim to support policymakers, investors, and other stakeholders in developing sustainable, resilient, and inclusive infrastructure while fostering effective partnerships with the private sector. Acknowledging the significant infrastructure data gap — with notable variations in coverage, quality across countries and income groups, and differences in the availability of regional breakdowns — our approach leverages the best available aggregated data from leading infrastructure databases to generate market insights while also providing context on its limitations. 2025 will be the fifth version of the report, the first under the World Bank.
  • Publication
    Disentangling the Key Economic Channels through Which Infrastructure Affects Jobs
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-04-03) Vagliasindi, Maria; Gorgulu, Nisan
    This paper takes stock of the literature on infrastructure and jobs published since the early 2000s, using a conceptual framework to identify the key channels through which different types of infrastructure impact jobs. Where relevant, it highlights the different approaches and findings in the cases of energy, digital, and transport infrastructure. Overall, the literature review provides strong evidence of infrastructure’s positive impact on employment, particularly for women. In the case of electricity, this impact arises from freeing time that would otherwise be spent on household tasks. Similarly, digital infrastructure, particularly mobile phone coverage, has demonstrated positive labor market effects, often driven by private sector investments rather than large public expenditures, which are typically required for other large-scale infrastructure projects. The evidence on structural transformation is also positive, with some notable exceptions, such as studies that find no significant impact on structural transformation in rural India in the cases of electricity and roads. Even with better market connections, remote areas may continue to lack economic opportunities, due to the absence of agglomeration economies and complementary inputs such as human capital. Accordingly, reducing transport costs alone may not be sufficient to drive economic transformation in rural areas. The spatial dimension of transformation is particularly relevant for transport, both internationally—by enhancing trade integration—and within countries, where economic development tends to drive firms and jobs toward urban centers, benefitting from economies scale and network effects. Turning to organizational transformation, evidence on skill bias in developing countries is more mixed than in developed countries and may vary considerably by context. Further research, especially on the possible reasons explaining the differences between developed and developing economies, is needed.
  • Publication
    The Impact of Climate Change on Education and What to Do about It
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-05-02) Venegas Marin, Sergio; Schwarz, Lara; Sabarwal, Shwetlena
    Education can be the key to ending poverty in a livable planet, but governments must act now to protect it. Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as cyclones, floods, droughts, heatwaves and wildfires. These extreme weather events are in turn disrupting schooling; precipitating learning losses, dropouts, and long-term impacts. Even if the most drastic climate mitigation strategies were implemented, extreme weather events will continue to have detrimental impacts on education outcomes.
  • Publication
    Global Economic Prospects, January 2025
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16) World Bank
    Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.