Entrepreneurship Programs in Developing Countries: A ... - IYFLive.net

increasing labor market activities can be better achieved by providing access to credits rather thantraining. To the contrary, for business owners, gaining access to finance does less in increasingtheir activities than receiving business training. The difference in effectiveness across programs isquite substantial among urban beneficiaries, with vocational training being most effective butbusiness training least useful in improving labor market activities. This suggests that lack oftechnical skills is a more binding constraint than limited knowledge on business in starting abusiness in urban areas.Country types characterizing important features in labor markets add to understanding of thecontext of the implemented programs (not shown here). In youth bulge countries where absorbing alarge stock of young workers in labor markets is a policy objective, vocational training seems morepromising than other intervention although program success is generally challenging in thesecountries. In formalizing countries where labor market is transitioning toward more formal andorganized sectors, business training can be more associated with increasing activities and businesssetup and expansion than other intervention.Panel B presents results of heterogeneity analysis on labor market income. Unlike labormarket activities, there are no significant differences across intervention types in terms ofimproving labor earning and profits. Programs that were found least effective in promotingactivities often turn out to have larger impacts on earnings. For instance, business training seems tohave greater impacts especially for youth and high education group in increasing their income,although it was not the case for labor market activities. Likewise, access to finance significantlyincreases labor income of social assistance beneficiaries. Overall, effect size in labor income islarger for high education and urban individuals.5.2.2. Business and Behavioral OutcomesWe now move onto business outcomes such as business knowledge and practice, and businessperformance which are important intermediate outcomes that may lead to successful business andincreased income (Table 10). 37 Considering the distribution of intervention, we disaggregateprograms as follows: a combination of training and financing, training only, a combination oftraining and counseling, and financing only. Panel A suggests that business and financial trainingalone can be quite effective in improving business knowledge and practice. This is particularly true37 Full regression results of the corresponding RE model are presented in Table A5 in Appendix.20