Impact Evaluation of a Large Scale Female Entrepreneurship Program in Mexico

Programs targeting micro businesses have become increasingly common in developing countries, particularly because micro enterprises employ a substantial fraction of individuals in these economies (about 47 percent in Mexico) and because the majority of these micro enterprises tend to stay small and have low productivity Many programs aimed at fostering the growth of micro and small businesses have focused on providing credits or offering business and financial training, since access to credit and lack of managerial skills are believed to limit the success of this type of businesses (Bruhn et al. 2011). The evaluation of this pilot, would provide evidence on an innovative approach to business-trainings, which is a combination of training on “hard skills” (traditional managerial skills) and “soft skills”(personal initiative training, aiming at promoting self-starting behavior, future orientation, and persistence against obstacles, helping entrepreneurs to preserve and gain competitive advantage in order to be one step ahead of competitors). This project will allow to estimate the added value of the “soft skills” approach to traditional business training packages for female micro entrepreneurs.