Basic Entrepreneurship: A Means for Transforming the Economic Lives of the Poor?

基本创业精神：改变穷人经济生活的一种手段？

• 批准号: ES/L005689/1
• 负责人: Robin Burgess
• 金额: $ 41.72万
• 依托单位: London School of Economics and Political Science
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2014 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FL005689%2F1
• 关键词: Basic; Entrepreneurship; Means; Transforming; Economic

The world's poorest people typically lack both capital and skills. They tend to work as in occupations such as agricultural labor or subsistence cultivation which are often insecure and seasonal in nature and which do not require capital or skills. The non-poor, in contrast, tend to be engaged in secure wage employment or to operate their own businesses. Consequently, most anti-poverty programs attempt to target the poor to help them overcome either a lack of capital and or skills. Notable policy interventions along these lines include microfinance programs on the capital side, or vocational training and adult education on the skills side. Yet it is uncertain whether many of these programs are, in fact, able to transform the occupational choices of the poor, and thereby enable them to permanently exit poverty. Occupational change is central to development and growth, but it is the result of a complex set of interactions between individuals, markets and the state, and it is therefore difficult to credibly link occupational change to a lack of capital and skills.The proposed research examines a new set of interventions, pioneered by the world's largest NGO BRAC in Bangladesh, which simultaneously tackle the capital and skills constraint in an attempt to encourage occupational change amongst the world's poorest women. We use randomised control trials of this type of program in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India to look at whether providing capital and skills can encourage basic entrepreneurship. The issue at hand is whether one can create successful female entrepreneurs - who acquire skills and make use of productive capital - out of poor women who started out with neither. Key to this question is whether asset and skill transfers can induce the poor to alter their occupational choices and permanently exit poverty, as opposed to simply enabling them to increase their consumption in the short term. These questions are highly salient as the world is littered with examples of anti-poverty programs, which despite their best intentions, fail to have any appreciable impact on their intended beneficiaries. The proposed research thus speaks directly to the first overarching question posed in the ESRC-DFID Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research 2012-13 on finding effective means to allow the poorest to exit and stay out of poverty. It also addresses directly the crosscutting issues on structural inequalities (particularly as regards gender) and measurement and metrics (particularly as regards measuring empowerment and the social dynamics and general equilibrium effects induced by the program). The interventions we examine are fundamentally about empowering the poorest women within rural communities both socially and economically so that they can exit and stay out of poverty. The proposed research begins with an on-going large randomized evaluation of the ultra poor program which is being carried out jointly by the Principal Investigator, Professor Robin Burgess, and the world's largest NGO, BRAC (Bandiera et al, 2012). It then extends to two further large randomized evaluations inspired by this BRAC flagship program. A randomized evaluation of a combined livestock and microfinance program which is being implemented by BRAC in rural Uganda. And an evaluation of the Punjab Economic Opportunities Program, being implemented by the Government of Punjab in Pakistan, which attempts to enable poor, rural inhabitants to start small livestock businesses by providing them with livestock assets and complementary training. The research will thus tell us something about whether the basic entrepreneurship idea, which was pioneered by BRAC in Bangladesh, can be replicated elsewhere.

世界上最贫穷的人通常缺乏资本和技能。他们往往从事农业劳动或自给耕作等职业，这些职业往往不安全且具有季节性，并且不需要资本或技能。相比之下，非穷人往往从事有保障的工资就业或经营自己的企业。因此，大多数反贫困计划都试图以穷人为目标，帮助他们克服资本和/或技能的缺乏。这方面值得注意的政策干预措施包括资本方面的小额信贷计划，或技能方面的职业培训和成人教育。然而，尚不确定其中许多计划实际上是否能够改变穷人的职业选择，从而使他们能够永久摆脱贫困。职业变化对于发展和增长至关重要，但它是个人、市场和国家之间一系列复杂相互作用的结果，因此很难将职业变化与缺乏资本和技能可靠地联系起来。拟议的研究考察了孟加拉国世界最大的非政府组织 BRAC 率先采取了一系列新的干预措施，同时解决资本和技能限制，试图鼓励世界上最贫穷的妇女进行职业改变。我们在孟加拉国、巴基斯坦和印度对此类计划进行了随机对照试验，以研究提供资本和技能是否可以鼓励基本创业精神。当前的问题是，人们能否从一开始就没有技能并利用生产资本的贫困妇女中培养出成功的女性企业家。这个问题的关键在于，资产和技能转移是否能够促使穷人改变职业选择并永久摆脱贫困，而不是简单地让他们在短期内增加消费。这些问题非常突出，因为世界上充斥着反贫困计划的例子，尽管这些计划的初衷是最好的，但未能对其预期受益人产生任何明显的影响。因此，拟议的研究直接回答了 ESRC-DFID 2012-13 年扶贫研究联合基金提出的第一个总体问题，即寻找有效手段让最贫困人口摆脱贫困。它还直接解决结构性不平等（特别是性别）以及衡量和指标（特别是衡量赋权以及该计划引起的社会动态和一般均衡效应）的跨领域问题。我们研究的干预措施从根本上讲是为了在社会和经济上赋予农村社区最贫困妇女权力，以便她们能够摆脱贫困。拟议的研究始于对极端贫困计划正在进行的大规模随机评估，该评估由首席研究员 Robin Burgess 教授和世界上最大的非政府组织 BRAC 联合进行（Bandiera 等，2012）。然后，它扩展到受 BRAC 旗舰项目启发的另外两项大型随机评估。对 BRAC 在乌干达农村地区实施的牲畜和小额信贷综合计划的随机评估。对巴基斯坦旁遮普邦政府正在实施的旁遮普经济机会计划进行了评估，该计划试图通过向贫穷的农村居民提供牲畜资产和补充培训来帮助他们创办小型畜牧业。因此，这项研究将告诉我们孟加拉国 BRAC 首创的基本创业理念是否可以在其他地方复制。

项目成果

Why Do People Stay Poor?

为什么人们仍然贫穷？

• DOI: http://dx.10.1093/qje/qjab045
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: The Quarterly Journal of Economics
• 作者: Balboni C

Labor Markets and Poverty in Village Economies*

劳动力市场和乡村经济的贫困*

• DOI: http://dx.10.1093/qje/qjx003
• 发表时间: 2017
• 期刊: The Quarterly Journal of Economics
• 作者: Bandiera O