Please use this form to submit your study for inclusion into our database. It will be checked by a member of the Innovation Growth Lab team, who may be in contact to ask for more information. Your email address * Your name * Title * The name of the study Short summary A brief description of the project's goals and its current state Abstract <p>SMS-based business trainings are becoming a popular tool to remotely support microentrepreneurs in low-income settings due to their scalability and low costs. However, little evidence exists on the effectiveness of such trainings to improve business outcomes. In this study, I evaluate a field experiment in which access to an SMS-based training was randomized across 4,700 micro-entrepreneurs in Kenya. After three months, I find positive effects on knowledge and adoption of best practices. Younger entrepreneurs see stronger effects on sales, profits and business survival, driven by higher engagement with training content, more time spent on business, and getting larger loans. Contrary to predictions elicited from social scientists, I find that these positive effects disappear twelve months after the intervention, as all engagement with content ended within the first five months. Notwithstanding the low engagement and lack of longer-run effects, I find that micro-entrepreneurs are still willing to pay a small positive amount for additional SMS-based trainings, suggesting that they value access to the content. Findings from this study suggest that, despite the promise and wide-spread use, SMS-based trainings are unlikely to be effective for micro-entrepreneurs. Results highlight the importance of lack of engagement as a major challenge limiting the potential of remotely provided trainings.</p> <p>A <a href="https://www.econthatmatters.com/2024/02/short-messages-fall-short-for-micro-entrepreneurs-experimental-evidence-from-kenya/">blog</a> on this research summarises the findings.</p> The full abstract of the study, if available Links https://www.ziamehmood.com/assets/publications/Mehmood_JMP.pdf Links to any published papers and related discussions Authors * Affiliations Academic and other institutes that the authors of the study are members of Delivery partner Organisations involved in delivering the trial, if appropriate Year Year Year199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026 Month MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Day Day12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031 Journal Journal publishing the study, if available Publication stage * Working Paper Published Ongoing Research Forthcoming Discussion Paper Research theme * Entrepreneurship Innovation Business Growth Country Country or countries where this study took place. Topics What sort of topics does the study cover? Sample attributes Hypotheses / research question Sample Trial population and sample selection Number of treatment groups Size of treatment groups Size of control group Unit of analysis Clustered? Yes No Cluster details Trial attributes Treatment description Rounds of data collection Baseline data collection and method Data collection method and data collected Evaluation Outcome variables Results Intervention costs Cost benefit ratio Reference Citation for use in academic references
