The Catch-22 of External Validity in the Context of Constraints to Firm Growth

We document the presence of multiple and varied constraints to small and medium firm growth. This presents both a practical problem for business training programs and a challenge to academic economists trying to identify mechanisms though which these programs may affect outcomes. External validity n...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American economic review 2015-05, Vol.105 (5), p.295-299
Main Authors: Fischer, Greg, Karlan, Dean
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Business growth
Business structures
Competition
Consulting services
Corporations
Economic growth
Economic models
Economic theory
Economists
Empirical research
EXPERIMENTS WITH FIRMS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
Graduate students
Human resources
Informal economy
Management consulting
Marketing
Operations management
Project management
Samples
Small & medium sized enterprises-SME
Small business
Small businesses
Studies
Tax rates
Training
Validity
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Summary:We document the presence of multiple and varied constraints to small and medium firm growth. This presents both a practical problem for business training programs and a challenge to academic economists trying to identify mechanisms though which these programs may affect outcomes. External validity needs theory. This pushes researchers to narrowly defined and highly selected sample frames, which limits the potential for clear, generalizable policy prescriptions. Ultimately, larger samples, multi-arm evaluations, process documentation, and narrowly-focused, theory-supported empirical work are all needed, but the complexity of the problem limits what we learn from any single study.
ISSN:0002-8282
1944-7981
DOI:10.1257/aer.p20151078