Unpacking the Determinants of Entrepreneurship Development and Economic Empowerment for Women

This impact evaluation aims to measure the causal impact of the ILO’s Get Ahead business training programme on the profitability, growth and survival of female-owned businesses in Kenya, and to evaluate whether any gains in profitability come at the expense of other business owners. To do so, the evaluation will use a randomized control trial (RCT) methodology with a two-level randomized experiment: randomized selection of villages, and of individuals within villages. The study works with 3,538 individuals in 157 markets. In addition to measuring the impact of this training program, individuals assigned to training are also then randomly assigned to one of three different invitation choice structures to measure the extent to which variations in the way in which people are invited to training affect training take-up.

Policy implications 
Business training can contribute to developing larger and more diverse markets and firms in developing countries.
Reference 
McKenzie, David; Puerto, Susana. 2017. Growing Markets through Business Training for Female Entrepreneurs : A Market-Level Randomized Experiment in Kenya. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7993. World Bank, Washington, DC.