CréaJeunes - Small Business Training

The Paris School of Economics proposed a project to the Haut-Commissariat aux Solidarités Actives (French Minister for Active Solidarity against Poverty) to evaluate the impact of one of Adie’s programs, CréaJeunes. The “Association pour le droit à l’initiative économique” (Adie), is an NGO that aids people in creating their own business. The program is designed to encourage and support young people employment and entrepreneurship, particularly in poorer neighborhoods. The start of this new program is a unique opportunity to put in place a system that will allow us to rigorously measure its impact. Indeed, the impact of existing programs designed to augment business creation in France have never been evaluated in a rigorous manner and thus evidence is lacking on whether these programs improve youth employment and reduce inequality and exclusion. The study analyzes the impact of the program by taking advantage of a lottery at the time of application to create two identical groups which allows a rigorous evaluation of the impact of the program.

Policy implications 
This study shows that entrepreneurship training programmes for young people can actually have a negative impact on aspiring entrepreneurs.
Reference 
Duflo, E., Crépon, B., Huillery, E., & Pariente, W., 2015. 'CréaJeunes - Small Business Training'. AEA RCT Registry.