McKenzie, David2012-03-192012-03-192011-04-01https://hdl.handle.net/10986/3398Firm productivity is low in African countries, prompting governments to try a number of active policies to improve it. Yet despite the millions of dollars spent on these policies, we are far from a situation where we know whether many of them are yielding the desired payoffs. This paper establishes some basic facts about the number and heterogeneity of firms in different sub-Saharan African countries and discusses their implications for experimental and structural approaches towards trying to estimate firm policy impacts. It shows that the typical firm program such as a matching grant scheme or business training program involves only 100 to 300 firms, which are often very heterogeneous in terms of employment and sales levels. As a result, standard experimental designs will lack any power to detect reasonable sized treatment impacts, while structural models which assume common production technologies and few missing markets will be ill-suited to capture the key constraints firms face. Nevertheless, the author suggests a way forward which involves focusing on a more homogeneous sub-sample of firms and collecting a lot more data on them than is typically collected.CC BY 3.0 IGOBUSINESS CLIMATEBUSINESS PLANBUSINESS PLANNINGBUSINESS SERVICESBUSINESSESCAPACITY BUILDINGCERTIFICATECOMMODITYCOMPETITIVENESSCOMPETITORSCORPORATIONCREDIT LINECREDIT RISKDATA COLLECTIONDECISION-MAKINGELECTRICITYEMPLOYMENTEMPLOYMENT CREATIONENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENTENTERPRISE SURVEYENTERPRISE SURVEYSENTREPRENEURSEQUIPMENTEXCESS DEMANDEXPORT PROMOTIONEXPORT SECTOREXTERNALITIESFINANCIAL CAPITALFIRMSGRANT PROGRAMSIMPACT ASSESSMENTSJOB CREATIONKEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORSLARGE ENTERPRISESLEARNINGLEASINGLITERACYLOANMACROECONOMIC STABILITYMANUFACTURINGMARKETINGMATCHING GRANTSMEDIUM ENTERPRISEMEDIUM SCALE ENTERPRISEMICROENTERPRISESMICROFINANCEMICROFINANCE PROGRAMOPEN ACCESSPERFORMANCE INDICATORSPRIVATE SECTORPRIVATE SECTOR ASSISTANCEPRIVATE SECTOR DEVELOPMENTPRODUCTION FUNCTIONSPRODUCTIVITYPROGRAMSREGULATORY BURDENRESULTRESULTSRETAIL TRADESCALE ENTERPRISESMALL ENTERPRISESMALL ENTERPRISESSMALL FIRMSSMESME DEVELOPMENTSME FINANCESME POLICIESSME PROJECTSME PROJECTSSUPPLIERSUPPLIERSTECHNICAL ASSISTANCETECHNICAL TRAININGTIME FRAMETIME PERIODSTRAINING COURSESUSESWEBWorld Bank10.1596/1813-9450-5632