Measuring microenterprise profits: Must we ask how the sausage is made?

How Can Micro and Small Enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa Become More Productive? The Impacts of Experimental Basic Managerial Training

“…Otsuka (2006, 2011) refer to this phase of industrial development as the quantity expansion phase since the expansion of the cluster is based on the new entry of imitators without any qualitative improvement in the products or the production processes. In this phase, owners do not keep records of transactions or inventory (e.g., de Mel, McKenzie, and Woodruff, 2009), and they fail to separate financing for their businesses with that of their own households. Even casual observers notice that in such disorganized workshops, owners and workers waste time looking for necessary tools and materials on a daily basis.…”

Business Literacy and Development: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial in Rural Mexico

“…While evidence from other developing countries suggests that self-reported measures of aggregate business activity are as accurate as formal accounting figures (de Mel, Mckenzie and Woodruff, 2009b), we nonetheless also collected data on the individual goods sold in the enterprise at baseline and in the first followup. We first asked the entrepreneur to list all of the goods that she sold (up to a maximum of 14).…”

Entrepreneurship, risk perception and firm performance

“…This study uses revenue to measure firm performance because is a relatively simple and reliable concept in this context. In addition, revenue is a good proxy of firm productivity (De Mel et al, 2009). The entrepreneurs were asked to indicate their sales in a high, average and low month.…”