Missing Information : Why Don’t More Firms Seek Out Business Advice?
This paper tests whether providing more information on business practices can lead firms to seek out advice and improve their practices. The authors collaborated with a business advice provider in Brazil to implement a randomized experiment with 86...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | English |
| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099239209152260610/IDU0e92ee85905ab1043ba0a67f0ec046b5af4f7 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/38033 |
| Summary: | This paper tests whether providing
more information on business practices can lead firms to
seek out advice and improve their practices. The authors
collaborated with a business advice provider in Brazil to
implement a randomized experiment with 866 small firms. The
treatment groups received different versions of an
information sheet that benchmarked business practices to
other firms and listed five practices to improve. Receiving
any information sheet increased demand for business advice
by 7 percentage points, relative to 21 percent in the
control group in the first six months, suggesting that
information matters for seeking out advice. However, the
control group catches up over the next 12 months. The
intervention did not affect business practices and
performance outcomes, but it decreased the fraction of firms
that report being happy with their performance. |
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