Impact of a Village-Based Graduation Program on Small Enterprise Creation and Growth in Rural Uganda

The researchers will study the impact of a village-wide graduation program on small enterprises. In this innovative program, every household in an eligible (highly impoverished) village receives a package of agricultural and livestock inputs and small enterprise support, alongside group training. This makes the program cheaper and more scalable than traditional household-targeted graduation programs. Including entire communities in the program may also magnify program impacts through general equilibrium effects. However, a village-wide program may make it more difficult for households to use entrepreneurship as a route out of poverty if businesses crowd each other out. 

The researchers will utilize an ongoing RCT in which 335 villages were randomly assigned to receive the program or not and will conduct a census and survey of all businesses in treatment and control communities to understand the impact of the program on business scale and profitability.