Evanston, United States
October 20, 2018
The SME Program held its Ninth Working Group meeting at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University on October 20, 2018, in Evanston, Illinois. The meeting convened SME Program affiliates to discuss innovative research around SMEs and entrepreneurship. Presentations included:
Opening remarks
Dean Karlan, Northwestern University
Shocking Business Aspirations: Experimental Evidence from Small-scale Entrepreneurs in a Developing Economy
Patricio Dalton, Tilburg University
Accra, Ghana
September 18, 2018
On September 18, IPA Ghana and the National Board of Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) co-hosted a roundtable on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) entitled “SMEs in Ghana: From Evidence to Action” at The African Regent Hotel in Accra.
Bogotá, Colombia
August 29, 2018
On August 29, IPA Colombia in collaboration with the Chamber of Commerce of Bogotá, the National Planning Department, and the World Bank Group, held a workshop titled: Evidence Dialogue on Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Development in Colombia. This interactive event brought together leading researchers from the SME and private sector development space, as well as policy and industry decision makers in Colombia.
Lima, Peru
August 27, 2018
On August 27, IPA in partnership with the Ministry of Production of Peru held an event entitled Evidence Dialogue on micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) Development in Peru. This half-day workshop featured presentations by academics and decision-makers in government, multilateral organizations, and the private sector.
Washington, D.C., United States
June 12, 2018 - June 13, 2018
On June 12-13, the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) hosted the 2018 "Metrics from the Ground Up" Conference in Washington, D.C.
Accra, Ghana
June 04, 2018 - June 05, 2018
On June 4-5, 2018, IPA and the National Board of Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) hosted the 2018 Ghana Women Entrepreneurship Summit (GWES).
New York, United States
April 07, 2018
On April 7, IPA Associate Director of Business and Program Development Faith McCollister participated in a panel discussion on youth unemployment at the 2018 African Economic Forum, held at Columbia University. The panel focused on the complex causes of youth unemployment in Africa and potential solutions to alleviate the problems it presents. During the discussion, McCollister noted the lack of an evidence-backed "silver bullet" for solving unemployment and emphasized the need for ongoing rigorous research.
Dhaka, Bangladesh
December 28, 2017
Co-hosted by the Access to Information (a2i) Program of the Prime Minister’s Office and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)
Synopsis
The SME sector has the potential to be a driving force of economic growth and employment creation in Bangladesh; however, a host of market and firm-level challenges are holding back this sector from achieving its full potential. For decades, the Government of Bangladesh and other sector advocates have worked on various initiatives to help small businesses grow; yet large-scale and transformational growth has been an elusive target.
Quezon City, Philippines
December 06, 2017
On December 6, IPA Philippines partnered with the Office of the Vice President of the Republic of the Philippines (OVP) and the University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies (UP CIDS). This event was attended by 12 key players and researchers in agribusiness to discuss linking small producers with supply chains and agribusiness models worth pursuing in the Philippine context. The event was conducted to help inform the design of OVP's Angat Buhay program.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
October 09, 2017 - October 13, 2017
The African Microfinance Week (referred to as the SAM, based on the French acronym) is a major conference dedicated to the development of financial inclusion in Africa that takes place every two years. The most recent SAM took place from the 9th to the 13th October, 2017, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The main ambition of the SAM is to provide a unified African platform for exchange on the microfinance issues facing the African continent by bringing together all the professionals of the sector – investors, MFIs, researchers, banks, networks, innovators, governments and others.
Cambridge, United States
September 29, 2017
The SME Program held its Eighth Working Group meeting at the Sloan School of Management at MIT on September 29, 2016, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The meeting convened SME Program affiliates to discuss innovative research in the SME space.
Presenters included:
New York, United States
September 19, 2017
On September 19th, Elizabeth Koshy, SME Program Manager, participated in a panel discussion on "Gender and Sustainable Development” at International Conference on Sustainable Development 2017, held at Columbia University in New York. Elizabeth’s presentation on "Using Evidence to Support Women-Owned SMEs" provided an overview of the challenges facing female entrepreneurs and showcased experimental evidence from IPA’s SME portfolio.
New Haven, United States
October 21, 2016
The SME Program held its Seventh Working Group meeting at the Yale School of Management on October 21, 2016 in New Haven, Connecticut. The meeting convened SME Program affiliates to discuss innovative research in the SME space.
Presenters included:
Opening Remarks
Dean Karlan, Yale University
Lucia Sánchez, Innovations for Poverty Action
Can Government Intervention Make Firms More Investment-Ready? A Randomized Experiment in the Western Balkans
David McKenzie, World Bank
New York, United States
September 21, 2016 - September 22, 2016
Lucia Sanchez, SME Program Director, participated in a panel discussion on "Data for Socially Inclusive Economic Growth” at ICSD 2016 in New York. Lucia’s presentation provided an overview of the key problems facing SMEs around access to finance, human capital, and markets, and showcased a series of interrelated research projects aimed at testing effective solutions to those problems. She also shared IPA’s experience bringing together policymakers and researchers to design and rigorously test innovative solutions to the most binding constraints to SME growth in developing countries.
, Philippines
September 14, 2016, September 20, 2016
On September 14th and 20th, IPA Philippines presented two brown bags to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD)’s Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP). On the 14th, IPA presented the results of a literature review of similar SLP micro-enterprise and employment facilitation programs found around the world. The presentation was followed by a lively discussion between IPA and DSWD. On the 20th, IPA presented the initial results of an M&E study to the SLP’s Management Committee.
