Despite the prevalence of female entrepreneurs in low- and middle-income countries, recent research suggests that women do not benefit from loans and grants in the same way that men do, leading to questions about the value of offering financial services to female entrepreneurs. Researchers re-examined data from previous studies in Ghana, India, and Sri Lanka to measure the impact of credit and cash grant variations on micro-enterprise profits in households where women were the only entrepreneurs and in households where other members also had a business. Easing financial constraints for female and male entrepreneurs in households with only one business led to comparable returns, but women attained lower returns when multiple household members had their own business. This suggests that poor financial returns to female entrepreneurs did not indicate lack of ability, but rather that females’ financial resources were often redirected to their husbands’ businesses.

Renewable off-grid home lighting systems have the potential to reduce the use of kerosene lanterns and other expensive and dirty forms of light in areas that lack electricity, but adoption of such lighting systems is low. In Rwanda, an IPA research team partnered with the social enterprise Nuru Energy to evaluate optimal pricing structures for lights, ways to enhance gender equity for the micro-entrepreneurs who recharge the lights, and how access to the lights impacts the economic well-being of households throughout the community. According to preliminary results, poor households bought or took home lights when they were offered either at low prices or for free, while almost no one bought them at market prices; households valued lights as much when they were free as when they had to pay for them. Inconvenience and recharging appear to be a major barrier to usage. Business performance and competition was similar across male- and female-owned microenterprise groups.

Differences in management quality are an important contributor to productivity differences across countries. A key question is how best to improve poor management in low- and middle-income countries. This evaluation tested two different approaches aimed at improving management in Colombian auto parts firms. The first was intensive and expensive one-on-one consulting, while the second provided consulting to small groups of firms at approximately one-third of the cost of the individual approach. Both approaches led to improvements in management practices of a similar magnitude (8–10 percentage points) and there was some evidence the group-based approach increased firm size. The results suggest group-based consulting may be a scalable way to improve management practices.