Complementing Business Training with Access to Finance: Evidence from SMEs in Kenya

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 were 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.

The supplementary materials contain the two main datasets and associated codes required to generate the figures and tables in the paper. Both the datasets are in panel formats where each business is identified using a unique identifier. More descriptions of the data can be found in the paper.

本文针对肯尼亚中小企业（small and medium enterprises, SMEs）的商业培训与及时获取金融资本间的互补关系展开研究。本研究涉及的商业支持项目中，所有参与者均接受了培训。其中三分之一的参与者在培训结束后可立即获得贷款（同期贷款组（Concurrent Loan group）），三分之一的参与者在培训六周后获得贷款（延迟贷款组（Delayed Loan group）），剩余三分之一的参与者则在又过四周后获得贷款（对照组（Control group））。尽管较长的时间滞后可能会削弱中小企业的知识留存与应用能力，但同期获得贷款及随之产生的企业资金支出，可能会分散创业者提升经营实践的注意力。我们在意向治疗（intention-to-treat）和实际治疗（treatment-on-the-treated）两种效应估计中均找到了支持后者的证据。对照组与延迟贷款组的中小企业均改善了其经营实践，而获得贷款的同期贷款组中小企业则完全未实现经营实践的提升。此外，获得贷款的创业者投入企业的时间更少，企业营收也出现下滑。

本研究的补充材料包含了生成论文中图表所需的两份核心数据集及配套代码。两份数据集均采用面板数据格式，每家企业均通过唯一标识符进行标识。有关该数据的更多详细说明可参见原文。