SME Initiative 2012 Working Group
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IPA’s SME Initiative, in collaboration with Private Enterprise Development in Low-Income Countries (PEDL), held its second Working Group in Cambridge, MA – a full-day event that brought together 41 researchers, practitioners and donors to discuss early-stage research and potential new projects pertaining to SME policy and entrepreneurship. The Working Group provided an opportunity for affiliates of the SME Initiative and PEDL to share their work, discuss potential areas for collaboration, and network with others active in the SME space.
A diverse array of presentations covered topics including, among others, the agenda and opportunities for collaboration with the new SME Finance Forum, the impact of exporting on quality and production of goods in Egyptian SME clusters, innovative platforms for third party contract enforcement, mobile solutions for improving SME management, credit constraints faced by coffee farmers, mobile salary payments in Afghan firms, and demand building and export dynamics in Chinese footwear firms.
Presenters included:
Welcome
Antoinette Schoar, MIT Sloan School of Management
Update on SME Initiative
Lucia Sanchez
"Tropical Lending: International Prices and Strategic Defaults among Coffee Washing Stations"
Rocco Macchiavello, Warwick University
"Enforcing labor regulations on SMEs; an experimental approach"
Rodrigo Wagner, Tufts University
"Testing a 3rd Party Contract Enforcement Solution in a Peruvian Textile Cluster"
Matthew Bird, Universidad del Pacifico
“The Impact of Exporting: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment”
David Atkin, Yale University
“IT/consulting solutions for SMEs”
Shawn Cole, Harvard Business School
“Entrepreneurship promotion in Latin America: policy and evaluation design"
Alessandro Maffioli , Inter-American Development Bank
"New Directions in SME Finance - New Challenges for Impact Measurement?"
Matthew Gamser, SME Finance Forum – IFC
"Mechanisms of Demand Building and Export Dynamics of Chinese Footwear Firms"
Daniel Xu, Duke University
"Exit from Informality: Carrot and Stick"
Giacomo de Giorgi, Stanford University
“Using Mobile Salary Payments to Improve Afghan Firm Performance”
Josh Blumenstock, University of Washington