Publication: Does the Small Business Programme Benefit Self-Employed Workers? Evidence from Nicaragua
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Published
2025-01-14
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1943-9407
Date
2025-01-14
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Business and skills training programmes have been a popular social policy intervention to increase productivity of the self-employed in developing countries. We study the Small Business of the Family Economy programme, a government business training programme designed to assist Nicaraguan self-employed workers. Using data from three rounds of the Nicaragua Living Standards Measurement Survey, we employ a difference-in-differences strategy to exploit variation in eligibility for the programme across time and economic activity. Our estimates indicate that the programme does not increase self-employed workers’ earnings overall. However, we find heterogeneous treatment effects for female self-employed workers with low educational attainment, which could be explained by increased working months and having a second job.
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