Evaluating the impact of manufacturing extension on productivity growth

Impact Evaluation of Small and Medium Enterprise Programs in Latin America and the Caribbean

“…These reforms notwithstanding, SME programs are rarely evaluated rigorously, and then mostly in high income countries such as the U.S. and Europe. In the U.S., evaluation studies have demonstrated that enterprise support programs such as the Manufacturing Extension Partnership can signifi cantly improve fi rm performance as compared to a control group (for example, see Jarmin, 1999). By contrast, developing country governments rarely evaluate their SME programs, and when they do, most rely on benefi ciary satisfaction surveys or simple case studies which cannot tell program administrators (or development partners) whether a program is working.…”

“…Classifi cation OECD -Japan -2002-1986to 1999 Overview of the Study This paper evaluated Japan's innovation promotion schemes for SMEs administered by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). It used plant-level panel data from the Census of Manufacturing linked to administrative data on benefi ciaries to see which fi rms were targeted and whether programs had any impacts on fi rm performance and innovation.…”

“…The paper uses the National Employment Salary, Training and Technology (Encuesta Nacional de Empleo, Salarios, Capacitacion y Tecnologia-EN-ESTYC) and Annual Industry Survey (Encuesta Industrial Annual-EIA) surveys maintained by INEGI to create the non-experimental panel dataset. The ENESTYC periodically surveys manufacturing fi rms with sample sizes of between 5,000 and 8,000 establishments, fi elded in 1995, 1999, the ENESTYC included a module of questions on participation in major government SME support programs. In 2005, INEGI also fi elded a Micro-ENESTYC survey with greatly expanded coverage of micro and small enterprises.…”

Fixing network failures? The contested case of the American Manufacturing Extension Partnership

“…We are unconcerned, however, for two reasons. First, Jarmin (1999) has '[estimated] the effect of manufacturing extension on [labor] productivity growth' using a two stage model that allowed him to control for client selection, and finds that effect to be both positive and significant. 8 Second, even analyses like Jarmin's (1999) must reckon with the fact that '"ceteris" is never quite "paribus"' (Sabel, 1982, p. 24).…”

“…First, Jarmin (1999) has '[estimated] the effect of manufacturing extension on [labor] productivity growth' using a two stage model that allowed him to control for client selection, and finds that effect to be both positive and significant. 8 Second, even analyses like Jarmin's (1999) must reckon with the fact that '"ceteris" is never quite "paribus"' (Sabel, 1982, p. 24). The relevant counterfactual is not really the absence of an organization like the MEP (by whatever name) given the prevalence across advanced economies-including liberal market economies-of some form of industrial policy targeted toward small-and midsized firms; the elimination of the MEP would beget efforts from other agencies, including many at the state and local level, to fill the void in some manner or other (Wessner, 2013;Ezell and Atkinson, 2011).…”