IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/snbeco/v1y2021i7d10.1007_s43546-021-00102-4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How effective are training and mentorship programs for entrepreneurs at promoting entrepreneurial activity? An impact evaluation

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Pereyra

    (CINVE—Centro de Investigaciones Económicas
    Universidad ORT Uruguay)

  • Diego Aboal

    (CINVE—Centro de Investigaciones Económicas
    Universidad ORT Uruguay
    Universidad de la República)

  • Flavia Rovira

    (CINVE—Centro de Investigaciones Económicas)

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the impact of a government-sponsored program aimed at promoting entrepreneurial activity in Uruguay. The C-Emprendedor program provides training and mentorship to potential entrepreneurs throughout the process of development of a business. We contribute to the empirical literature on the effects of different entrepreneurial programs, and provide information for policymakers, by conducting a rigorous evaluation of a program designed to foster entrepreneurial activity. Using regression discontinuity methods, we assess the impact of the program on actions taken to create a business, investment, business creation, and employment. We find significant, although non-robust, effects on employment and the probability to take actions aimed at creating a business. No effects were found on investment and the rate of business creation. Our research provides important insights for the better design of public policies aimed at developing entrepreneurship skills.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Pereyra & Diego Aboal & Flavia Rovira, 2021. "How effective are training and mentorship programs for entrepreneurs at promoting entrepreneurial activity? An impact evaluation," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(7), pages 1-21, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:snbeco:v:1:y:2021:i:7:d:10.1007_s43546-021-00102-4
    DOI: 10.1007/s43546-021-00102-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s43546-021-00102-4
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s43546-021-00102-4?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William R. Kerr & Josh Lerner & Antoinette Schoar, 2014. "The Consequences of Entrepreneurial Finance: Evidence from Angel Financings," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(1), pages 20-55, January.
    2. Inés Butler & Gabriela Galassi & Hernán Ruffo, 2016. "Public funding for startups in Argentina: an impact evaluation," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 295-309, February.
    3. David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2010. "Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 281-355, June.
    4. Sebastian Calonico & Matias D. Cattaneo & Rocio Titiunik, 2014. "Robust data-driven inference in the regression-discontinuity design," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 14(4), pages 909-946, December.
    5. de Mel, Suresh & McKenzie, David & Woodruff, Christopher, 2014. "Business training and female enterprise start-up, growth, and dynamics: Experimental evidence from Sri Lanka," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 199-210.
    6. Eric Bartelsman & Stefano Scarpetta & Fabiano Schivardi, 2003. "Comparative Analysis of Firm Demographics and Survival: Micro-Level Evidence for the OECD Countries," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 348, OECD Publishing.
    7. Alejandro Drexler & Greg Fischer & Antoinette Schoar, 2014. "Keeping It Simple: Financial Literacy and Rules of Thumb," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 1-31, April.
    8. Wilbert Van Der Klaauw, 2008. "Regression–Discontinuity Analysis: A Survey of Recent Developments in Economics," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 22(2), pages 219-245, June.
    9. Jens Ludwig & Douglas L. Miller, 2007. "Does Head Start Improve Children's Life Chances? Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(1), pages 159-208.
    10. Cho, Yoonyoung & Honorati, Maddalena, 2014. "Entrepreneurship programs in developing countries: A meta regression analysis," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 110-130.
    11. Hugo A. Hopenhayn, 2014. "Firms, Misallocation, and Aggregate Productivity: A Review," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 735-770, August.
    12. Cook, Thomas D., 2008. ""Waiting for Life to Arrive": A history of the regression-discontinuity design in Psychology, Statistics and Economics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 636-654, February.
    13. Premand, Patrick & Brodmann, Stefanie & Almeida, Rita & Grun, Rebekka & Barouni, Mahdi, 2016. "Entrepreneurship Education and Entry into Self-Employment Among University Graduates," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 311-327.
    14. Shubha Chakravarty & Mattias Lundberg & Plamen Nikolov & Juliane Zenker, 2017. "The Value of Skill Training Programs for Self-Employment, Entrepreneurship and Non-Cognitive Traits. Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design," Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth - Discussion Papers 238, Courant Research Centre PEG.
    15. Bonilla, Claudio A. & Cancino, Christian A., 2011. "The Impact of the Seed Capital Program of SERCOTEC in Chile," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 3824, Inter-American Development Bank.
    16. Lucia Foster & John C. Haltiwanger & C. J. Krizan, 2001. "Aggregate Productivity Growth: Lessons from Microeconomic Evidence," NBER Chapters, in: New Developments in Productivity Analysis, pages 303-372, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Oosterbeek, Hessel & van Praag, Mirjam & Ijsselstein, Auke, 2010. "The impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurship skills and motivation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 442-454, April.
    18. William P. Barnett & Henrich R. Greve & Douglas Y. Park, 1994. "An Evolutionary Model of Organizational Performance," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(S1), pages 11-28, December.
    19. Hong W. Tan & Gladys Lopez-Acevedo, 2011. "Impact Evaluation of Small and Medium Enterprise Programs in Latin America and the Caribbean," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 2298.
    20. Miriam Bruhn & Bilal Zia, 2013. "Stimulating managerial capital in emerging markets: the impact of business training for young entrepreneurs," Journal of Development Effectiveness, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(2), pages 232-266, June.
    21. Karlan, Dean & List, John A. & Shafir, Eldar, 2011. "Small matches and charitable giving: Evidence from a natural field experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(5), pages 344-350.
    22. Imbens, Guido W. & Lemieux, Thomas, 2008. "Regression discontinuity designs: A guide to practice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 615-635, February.
    23. Stefano Scarpetta & Philip Hemmings & Thierry Tressel & Jaejoon Woo, 2002. "The Role of Policy and Institutions for Productivity and Firm Dynamics: Evidence from Micro and Industry Data," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 329, OECD Publishing.
    24. Bailey Klinger & Matthias Schundeln, 2007. "Can Entrepreneurial Activity be Taught? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Central America," CID Working Papers 153, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    25. Zacharakis, Andrew L. & Meyer, G. Dale, 2000. "The potential of actuarial decision models: Can they improve the venture capital investment decision?," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 323-346, July.
    26. Lee, David S. & Card, David, 2008. "Regression discontinuity inference with specification error," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 655-674, February.
    27. Hahn, Jinyong & Todd, Petra & Van der Klaauw, Wilbert, 2001. "Identification and Estimation of Treatment Effects with a Regression-Discontinuity Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(1), pages 201-209, January.
    28. William J. Baumol, 2004. "Education for Innovation: Entrepreneurial Breakthroughs vs. Corporate Incremental Improvements," NBER Working Papers 10578, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    29. Claudio A. Bonilla & Christian A. Cancino, 2011. "The Impact of the Seed Capital Program of SERCOTEC in Chile," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 61258, Inter-American Development Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jin-young Choi & Myoung-jae Lee, 2017. "Regression discontinuity: review with extensions," Statistical Papers, Springer, vol. 58(4), pages 1217-1246, December.
    2. Guido W. Imbens & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2009. "Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 5-86, March.
    3. Mauricio Villamizar‐Villegas & Freddy A. Pinzon‐Puerto & Maria Alejandra Ruiz‐Sanchez, 2022. "A comprehensive history of regression discontinuity designs: An empirical survey of the last 60 years," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 1130-1178, September.
    4. Papay, John P. & Willett, John B. & Murnane, Richard J., 2011. "Extending the regression-discontinuity approach to multiple assignment variables," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 161(2), pages 203-207, April.
    5. Alaref, Jumana & Brodmann, Stefanie & Premand, Patrick, 2020. "The medium-term impact of entrepreneurship education on labor market outcomes: Experimental evidence from university graduates in Tunisia," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    6. Matias D. Cattaneo & Rocío Titiunik, 2022. "Regression Discontinuity Designs," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 14(1), pages 821-851, August.
    7. de Lazzer, Jakob, 2016. "Non-monotonic Selection Issues in Electoral Regression Discontinuity Designs," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145845, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    8. Inés Butler & Gabriela Galassi & Hernán Ruffo, 2016. "Public funding for startups in Argentina: an impact evaluation," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 295-309, February.
    9. Yoichi Arai & Hidehiko Ichimura, 2018. "Simultaneous selection of optimal bandwidths for the sharp regression discontinuity estimator," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 9(1), pages 441-482, March.
    10. Sebastian Calonico & Matias D Cattaneo & Max H Farrell, 2020. "Optimal bandwidth choice for robust bias-corrected inference in regression discontinuity designs," The Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 23(2), pages 192-210.
    11. Premand, Patrick & Brodmann, Stefanie & Almeida, Rita & Grun, Rebekka & Barouni, Mahdi, 2016. "Entrepreneurship Education and Entry into Self-Employment Among University Graduates," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 311-327.
    12. Alessio Gaggero & Joan Gil & Dolores Jiménez-Rubio & Eugenio Zucchelli, 2021. "Health information and lifestyle behaviours: the impact of a diabetes diagnosis," UB School of Economics Working Papers 2021/406, University of Barcelona School of Economics.
    13. Frandsen, Brigham R. & Frölich, Markus & Melly, Blaise, 2012. "Quantile treatment effects in the regression discontinuity design," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 168(2), pages 382-395.
    14. Luciana Juvenal & Paulo Santos Monteiro, 2024. "Risky Gravity," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 22(4), pages 1590-1627.
    15. Feng, Li & Figlio, David & Sass, Tim, 2018. "School accountability and teacher mobility," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 1-17.
    16. Berlinski, Samuel & Ramos, Alejandra, 2020. "Peer effects in the decision to apply for a professional excellence award," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    17. Chad D. Meyerhoefer & Muzhe Yang, 2011. "The Relationship between Food Assistance and Health: A Review of the Literature and Empirical Strategies for Identifying Program Effects," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 33(3), pages 304-344.
    18. Gong, Jie & Lu, Yi & Xie, Huihua, 2020. "The average and distributional effects of teenage adversity on long-term health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    19. Nicholas Barton & Tessa Bold & Justin Sandefur, 2017. "Measuring Rents from Public Employment: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Kenya - Working Paper 457," Working Papers 457, Center for Global Development.
    20. Davezies, Laurent & Le Barbanchon, Thomas, 2017. "Regression discontinuity design with continuous measurement error in the running variable," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 200(2), pages 260-281.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:snbeco:v:1:y:2021:i:7:d:10.1007_s43546-021-00102-4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.