Microenterprise Dynamics in Developing Countries: How Similar are They to Those in the Industrialized World? Evidence from Mexico
利用墨西哥面板数据研究微型企业进入、退出和增长模式，并与美国对比，发现尽管自雇部门规模更大，但进入、生存和增长模式高度相似，表明主流模型适用于发展中国家。
A rich panel data set from Mexico is used to study the patterns of entry, exit, and growth of microenterprises and to compare these with the findings of the mainstream theoretical and empirical work on firm dynamics. The Mexican self-employment sector is much larger than its counterpart in the United States, which is reflected in higher unconditional rates of entry into the sector. The evidence for Mexico points to the significant presence of well-performing salaried workers among the likely entrants into self-employment, as opposed to the higher incidence of poorer wageworkers among the entrants into the U.S. self-employment sector. Despite these differences, however, the patterns of entry, survival, and growth with respect to age, education, and many other covariates are very similar in Mexico and the United States. These strong similarities suggest that mainstream models of worker decisions and firm behavior are useful guides for policymaking for the developing-country microenterprise sector. Furthermore, they suggest that, as a first approximation, the developing-country microenterprise should probably be viewed as they are in the advanced countries as offering potentially desirable job opportunities to low-productivity workers. This article examines whether microenterprises in developing countries behave similarly to their industrial country counterparts or whether they represent a separate phylum altogether. In industrial countries, the last two decades have seen the emergence of a set of stylized facts about the personal and firm characteristics associated with entry into self-employment, the survival and growth of existing microenterprises, and theoretical frameworks to explain them. However, notwithstanding the increasing importance given to the