Publication: The Impact of Expanding Simplified Start-up Procedures to More Remote Areas : The Minas Facil Expresso Program
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2013-02
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2013-02
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This note shows how the rich administrative data collected by many governments can be used to evaluate a policy reform, and provides an example where impact evaluation reveals that a policy didn t work as well as intended.
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“McKenzie, David; Bruhn, Miriam. 2013. The Impact of Expanding Simplified Start-up Procedures to More Remote Areas : The Minas Facil Expresso Program. Finance & PSD Impact;No. 22. © http://hdl.handle.net/10986/17031 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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Publication Using Administrative Data to Evaluate Municipal Reforms : An Evaluation of the Impact of Minas Fácil Expresso(Taylor and Francis, 2013-07-04)This study uses administrative data to evaluate the impact of Minas Fácil Expresso, a programme in the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil, which expanded a business start-up simplification programme to more remote municipalities. Using difference-in-differences with 56 months of registration data for 822 municipalities, the analysis finds introducing the programme actually led to a reduction in registration rates, and no change in tax revenues. The paper uses this evaluation to illustrate the design choices and the issues involved in using administrative data to evaluate reforms, also providing a template that can be used for evaluating similar reforms elsewhere.Publication Using Administrative Data to Evaluate Municipal Reforms : An Evaluation of the Impact of Minas Facil Expresso(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-02)Efforts to make it easier for firms to register formally are the most common form of business regulatory reform over the past decade. While there is evidence that large reforms have resulted in some increases in registration rates, recent experimental evidence suggests very few informal firms choose to register when given information about how to do so. This raises the question of whether it is productive for governments to continue to extend simplification efforts to all firms, especially those in more remote areas where many of the benefits of registering may be reduced. This study uses administrative data to evaluate the impact of Minas Facil Expresso, a program in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, which attempted to expand a business start-up simplification program to more remote municipalities. Using difference-in-differences with 56 months of registration data for 822 municipalities, the analysis finds introducing these units actually led to a reduction in registration rates, and no change in tax revenues. The paper uses this evaluation to illustrate the design choices and issues involved in using administrative data to evaluate reforms, with the goal of also providing a template that can be used for evaluating similar reforms elsewhere.Publication The Minimal Impact of a Large-Scale Financial Education Program in Mexico City(Elsevier, 2014-03-12)We conduct randomized experiments around a large-scale financial literacy course in Mexico City to understand the reasons for low take-up among a general population, and to measure the impact of this financial education course. Our results suggest that reputational, logistical, and specific forms of behavioral constraints are not the main reasons for limited participation, and that people do respond to higher benefits from attending in the form of monetary incentives. Attending training results in a 9 percentage point increase in financial knowledge, and a 9 percentage point increase in some self-reported measures of saving, but in no impact on borrowing behavior. Administrative data suggests that any savings impact may be short-lived. Our findings indicate that this course which has served over 300,000 people and has expanded throughout Latin America has minimal impact on marginal participants, and that people are likely making optimal choices not to attend this financial education course.Publication Business Training and Female Enterprise Start-up, Growth, and Dynamics : Experimental Evidence from Sri Lanka(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-07)The authors conduct a randomized experiment among women in urban Sri Lanka to measure the impact of the most commonly used business training course in developing countries, the Start-and-Improve Your Business program. They work with two representative groups of women: a random sample of women operating subsistence enterprises and a random sample of women who are out of the labor force but interested in starting a business. They track the impacts of two treatments -- training only and training plus a cash grant -- over two years with four follow-up surveys and find that the short and medium-term impacts differ. For women already in business, training alone leads to some changes in business practices but has no impact on business profits, sales or capital stock. In contrast, the combination of training and a grant leads to large and significant improvements in business profitability in the first eight months, but this impact dissipates in the second year. For women interested in starting enterprises, business training speeds up entry but leads to no increase in net business ownership by the final survey round. Both profitability and business practices of the new entrants are increased by training, suggesting training may be more effective for new owners than for existing businesses. The study also finds that the two treatments have selection effects, leading to entrants being less analytically skilled and poorer.Publication A Helping Hand or the Long Arm of the Law?(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-05)Since 2004, 75 percent of countries have adopted at least one reform making it easier to register a business. Yet, despite these efforts, the majority of firms in most developing countries remain informal. This is of concern to policymakers, who worry that a large stock of informal firms results in a loss in tax revenue, unfair competition for formal firms, and a culture of informality. Much less attention has been given to increasing the costs of remaining informal through better enforcement of existing laws. A field experiment conducted with the State Government of Minas Gerais in the city of Belo Horizonte in Brazil provides an opportunity to test the relative merits of further cost-reduction versus enforcement in formalizing firms. Further experimentation as to how to better improve the process of enforcement of regulations, seems an important area for policy and research efforts going forward.
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