Complementing business training with access to finance: Evidence from SMEs in Kenya
研究了肯尼亚中小企业中，商业培训后立即获得贷款会削弱培训效果，而延迟贷款则有助于企业改进实践，但贷款本身会减少企业家投入时间并降低收入。
This paper investigates the complementarity between business training and timely access to financial capital for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Kenya. All participants in the business support program we study are offered training. One-third of participants are offered loans immediately after training ( Concurrent Loan group), one-third are offered loans six weeks after training ( Delayed Loan group), and the remaining third are offered loans after another four weeks ( Control group). While a long time lag may reduce knowledge retention and application among SMEs, concurrent access to loans and associated business spending may divert the entrepreneurs’ attention away from improving business practices. We find evidence for the latter in both intention-to-treat and treatment-on-the-treated estimates. While SMEs in both Control and Delayed Loan groups improve their business practices, SMEs in the Concurrent Loan group who take loans do not improve their practices at all. Moreover, entrepreneurs who take loans spend less time on their businesses and experience declines in their business revenue. • Providing loans immediately after business training reduces improvements in business practices for small and medium enterprises. • A delayed access to loans after training helps entrepreneurs to focus on implementing training lessons. • Access to loans reduces the time treated entrepreneurs spend on their businesses and lowers business performance.