Impact Evaluation (IE) Concept Note How Effective the Matching Grant Scheme in Improving Firm Performance and Export Outcomes Tunisia P158446 September 8, 2016 JEL Codes: D22, L20, O31 Keywords: 1 Export Subsidy, Trade Diversification, Firm Productivity, Innovation, Matching Grant, Randomized Control Trial 1 Please refer to JEL classification codes http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/displayjel.cfm .
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Impact Evaluation (IE) Concept Note
How Effective the Matching Grant Scheme in Improving Firm Performance and Export Outcomes
5. THEORY OF CHANGE (E) .................................................................................................................................. 9
7. MAIN OUTCOMES OF INTEREST (E,R) ............................................................................................................. 12
8. EVALUATION DESIGN AND SAMPLING STRATEGY (E,R) .................................................................................. 13
8.1 TREATMENT AND CONTROL GROUPS ................................................................................................................... 14
9.2 MANAGEMENT OF DATA QUALITY ...................................................................................................................... 16
9.5 IE IMPLEMENTATION MONITORING SYSTEM (R) ..................................................................................................... 17
10. DATA PROCESSING AND ANALYSIS .......................................................................................................... 17
10.1 DATA CODING, ENTRY, AND EDITING (E) ............................................................................................................... 17
10.2 MODEL SPECIFICATION FOR QUANTITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS .................................................................................... 17
11. STUDY LIMITATIONS AND RISKS (E) .......................................................................................................... 18
12.1 EVALUATION TEAM AND MAIN COUNTERPARTS .................................................................................................... 19
12.2 WORK PLAN AND DELIVERABLES ........................................................................................................................ 19
2 IE Title Tunisia Matching Grant Impact Evaluation
3 IE TTL Aminur Rahman
4 IE Contact Person Aminur Rahman, GTCME
5 Region MEN
6 Sector Board/Global Practice T&C
7 WBG PID (if IE is evaluating a WBG operation) P132381
8 WBG Project Name (if IE is evaluating a WBG operation)
Third Export Development Project (EDP III)
9 Project TTL (if IE is evaluating a WBG operation) Mariem Malouche
10 Intervention Impact of Matching Grant in Promoting Exports
11 Main Outcomes Firms’ export performance in terms of export volume, export of new products or variety, and/or exports to new markets.
12 IE Unit of Intervention/Randomization Firms in Tunisia
13 Number of IE Units of Intervention 1500 firms (approximately)
14 IE Unit of Analysis Firms
15 Number of IE Units of Analysis 1500 firms (approximately)
16 Number of Treatment Arms 3 (2 treatments and 1 control)
17 IE Question 1 (Treatment Arm 1) What is the impact of export subsidy rebate on firms’ export performance?
18 Method IE Question 1 Random assignment at the firm level
19 Mechanism tested in IE Question 1 Package
20 IE Question 2 (Treatment Arm 2) What is the impact of subsidizing the cost of standards and quality certification on firms’ ability to export high value added products and/or to new markets?
21 Method IE Question 2 Random assignment at the firm level
22 Mechanism tested in IE Question 2 Package
23 IE Question 3 (Treatment Arm 3) N/A
24 Method IE Question 3 N/A
25 Mechanism tested in IE Question 3 N/A
25 Gender-specific treatment (Yes, No) No
27 Gender analysis (Yes, No) To be determined as we don’t know what percent of matching grant applicants will be female owned in treatment and control groups.
28 IE Team & Affiliations Giacomo De Giorgi (New York Federal Reserve Bank, ICREA/MOVE, Barcelona Graduate School of Economics; Co-PI); Aminur Rahman (World Bank Group, T&C, Co-PI and IE TTL); Eric Verhoogen (Columbia University; Co-PI)
29 Estimated Budget (including research time) 499,645
30 CN Review Date 10-2016
31 Estimated Timeframe for IE 10-2016 to 12-2019
32 Main Local Counterpart Institution(s) Tunisia Export Promotion Agency (CEPEX)
Describe the proposed IE in non-technical language in one paragraph or less. This could be an abstract of your IE. Include broad motivation/background and policy/research contribution. (E,R)
Present IE questions and main outcome(s) the intervention aims to affect.
Briefly explain how you are proposing to test your main evaluation question(s).
Tunisia seems to be trapped into a low productivity-low value added export-low economic growth situation. To
promote export diversification, Tunisia, with the support from the World Bank Group, is implementing a $50 million
Export Development Project III (EDP III), a significant component of which is a $22 million export matching grant
component, TASDIR+. TASDIR+’s objective is to increase exports in a sustained manner over time in addition to
promoting export diversification toward more high value added exports and/or to new markets. While both export
subsidy and matching grant are popular policy tools, to date there is very little rigorous evidence on their
effectiveness, a gap this proposed IE aims to address.
While the scope of TASDIR+, which aims to provide 50-70 percent co-financing to the firms to help firms improve
their export competitiveness, is fairly broad, we aim to test two specific interventions through RCT: (i) does export
subsidy rebates (treatment 1) encourage firms to increase export volume, export new product variety, and/or export
to new (advanced) markets, and (ii) does subsidizing the costs to obtain quality standards certificates and
accreditation help firms to export to new markets or new product variety. Through these interventions, we will also
evaluate if and how a firm’s export performance contributes to its productivity and growth by enhancing its
production possibility frontier.
Through communication campaign, we aim to encourage a wide number of applicants for each of the treatment
arms and we aim to roll out the applications 2-3 times a year if not more. Through a simple screening process, we
aim to select eligible pool of firms for each treatment arms, from which we will randomly assign a total of
approximately 250 firms into treatment group and 500 firms into control group for each intervention over a period
of 2-3 years to rigorously measure the effect of each of these interventions on firm’s export performance.
The underlying idea for the first intervention is that firms may not be efficient enough to compete on price to new
markets/new product space with more efficient competitors from other countries; hence the export subsidy rebate
would make Tunisian firms’ pricing more competitive in international markets. If exporting makes those firms more
efficient either by moving them along the production possibility frontier or expanding such frontier then a short-
term intervention can have long lasting consequences. Second intervention focuses on short term liquidity constraint
and/or investment under uncertainty situation. Exporting to advance economies often requires obtaining necessary
quality certification and accreditations, which the cash strapped firms might not be able to obtain, or the firms may
not be willing to undertake such costly investment as success to enter into the advanced market/product space is
uncertain. Thus by providing subsidy to the firms to obtain the necessary certificates and accreditation, we aim to
either overcome the potential liquidity constraints of the firms or to reduce their investment risks, and if these are
some the binding constraints for the firms to exports to advanced economies, then the second intervention would
help unleash the productivity gains of the firms from entering into the advanced market/product space.
Thus this IE tackles the questions that lie at the heart of Tunisian development strategy of how to promote economic
development through export diversification. As the new empirical literature on international trade argues, it is
5
important to understand the factors that influence a country’s transition from the production of low-quality to high-
quality products since the production of high-quality goods is often viewed as a pre-condition for export success
and, ultimately, for economic development. However, there is not much rigorous evidence on what firm level
supports the government can provide to enable them to transit from low-value added to high-value added exports
(product diversification) or accessing new export markets (market diversification). This IE attempts to fill this gap.
The findings from our IE also expect to influence the government’s design of the matching grant scheme for
subsequent years. TASDIR+ plans to run until 2021. Therefore, the IE findings from the initial years of the matching
grant scheme will greatly benefit the government to make any necessary adjustment to the subsequent years to
make the scheme more effective.
2. BACKGROUND AND KEY INSTITUTIONAL FEATURES (1 page)
Present an overview of the local context.
Identify and define the problem: what is the policy/research problem this IE is proposing to study? Which
groups are affected by the problem?
Describe the intervention whether existing or new, implementing organization, institutional setting and any
important consideration.
Describe the intervention geographic/demographic scale and scope: Does it represent the “mode” of
delivery in the country? (R, E)
Tunisia appears to be trapped into a low productivity-low value added export-low economic growth situation. While
Tunisia has been one of the best performers in MENA region with an annual average GDP growth of 4.8 percent over
most of the 2000s, its growth rate is significantly lower than that of the high growth emerging economies. Tunisia’s
growth has been fueled by exports, but its export sector is characterized by lack of market and products
diversification, low value added, and little innovation. Its exports remain highly concentrated in the European market
(70 percent of Tunisia’s exports in 2010), and predominantly in three countries: France, Italy, and Germany (which
together accounts for 56 percent of total exports in 2010). This makes Tunisia vulnerable to the vagaries of EU growth
and the Euro.
In addition to lack of market diversification, the value addition of Tunisia’s exports, which is dominated by textiles,
garments, mechanical, and electrical engineering products (accounting for 60 percent of total exports), is low. While
the ratio of exports value to GDP is 47 percent, in terms of value addition, exporting manufacturing sectors generate
less than 15 percent of GDP. This is because Tunisian exporters still largely remain sub-contractors to large foreign
companies (at the lower end of the latter’s value chain) rather than being direct exporters, and continue to produce
relatively simple goods subject to stringent competition in the EU market. These products can be easily replaced
with similar products from other lower cost locations, such as China, India, and Bangladesh.
To transform the economy from a low-wage, low value-added, economy to a knowledge-based and skill-intensive
one (World Bank, 2012), Tunisia needs to pursue a two pronged strategy of repositioning in traditional sectors and
diversification into new sectors and products. First, it needs to move up the value chain in traditional export sectors
by deepening integration, products sophistication and supporting initiatives that enhance logistics and innovation
investment. Second, it needs to promote investment in newer, knowledge intensive products and services. Overall,
a gain in efficiency is demanded for Tunisia to grow at a higher pace. In this regard, the Government of Tunisia (GoT),
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with the support from the World Bank Group is implementing the Export Development Project III (EDP III), a $50
million investment project whose objective is to help increase and diversify exports by supported enterprises. This
project includes a $22 million component, named TASDIR+, for an export matching grant to beneficiary enterprises.
TASDIR+ in EDP III (i.e. the matching grant project that we aim to evaluate) has been designed based on lessons and
achievements of the FAMEX I and II (matching grants under EDP I and EDP II). Building on FAMEX I and II, the objective
of TASDIR+ is to increase exports in a sustained manner over time (well beyond the period of export subsidy), in
addition to promoting export diversification toward more value added exports and/or to new markets.
The key objective of this proposed impact evaluation (IE) of TASDIR+ is to rigorously evaluate if and to what extent
subsidizing a firm’s export cost through matching grant improves the firm’s export performance in terms of one or
more of the following outcomes: (i) increased export volume in the same market, (ii) accessing new market, and (iii)
introducing new product/product-variety in the existing and/or new market.
Why export subsidy through matching grant? Financing of export is a critical constraint especially for smaller SMEs
and new exporters in Tunisia. Available data from the 2012 World Bank’s Enterprise Survey show that Tunisian
companies typically consider access to and cost of financing as one of their greatest barriers to their growth. Around
40 percent of firms consider finance as their biggest binding constraint just after political instability, macroeconomic
uncertainty and employment readiness. Challenges to SME finance is also associated with heightened risk aversion
in a fragile environment, increased government financing by banks, additional loan concentration linked for instance
to large investment programs.
Entering into new market and innovation also involve substantial risk and investment, which in the current uncertain
environment, Tunisian firms are unlikely to take even if they had the financing power. To export new products, to
enter into new market, or to do both, firms have to (i) identify the right target market, product segment, and selling
channel; (ii) learn how to adapt their products for these markets; (iii) understand their competitors; (iv) launch
marketing and selling campaign; (v) train and hire new workers to be ready for the job; (v) obtain necessary quality
and standards certification, (vi) deliver the product on time and collect on sales. These activities require significant
investments with uncertain outcomes and thus often not financed from traditional financing sources (e.g.
commercial banks). All these in turn justify the government intervention in the form of providing export subsidy
through matching grant to encourage the “first movers” firms to take the risk for export diversification as their
success could lay the path for the followers to venture into those new markets or to export those new products.
Moreover, the success of the first movers could also create an overall “brand” effect of Tunisian products (a la Italian
shoes, Swiss watches, and so on) to the new markets, thereby making subsequent entry easier for the “followers”,
which adds to the rationale for the matching grant scheme.
The IE will be implemented in close collaboration with the World Bank Operation Team who is in charge of the EDP
III project and with Tunisia Export Promotion Agency (CEPEX); the latter is in charge of implementing TASDIR+, the
matching grant component of the EDP III project. A government team including the representative from CEPEX
participated and discussed the IE concept at the DIME and T&C IE Workshop in Istanbul in 2015. Subsequently the
IE research team conducted a detailed discussion on the IE methodology and implementation issues with CEPEX
team.
3. LITERATURE REVIEW (E) (1 page or less)
7
Describe most relevant literature/scientific background specifically linked to your problem/evaluation question(s).
Both matching grants and export subsidies are popular policy ideas. As Campos et al (2014) write, "[o]ver the past twenty years matching grants have been a mainstay of World Bank projects to enhance private sector competitiveness." Export promotion schemes of various types have also been implemented in a large number of developing countries. But to our knowledge there has not been a randomized evaluation of a matching-grant program specifically targeted toward increasing exports. Moreover, there have been relatively few rigorous evaluations, either randomized or quasi-experimental, of similar or closely related programs. Overall, although the trend is positive, the evaluation literature has not kept pace with the policy initiatives in this area. One way to categorize the related literature is to distinguish between randomized and non-randomized (generally quasi-experimental) evaluations. Focusing first on randomized evaluations (of matching-grant programs generally, since we are not aware of one specifically targeted to export promotions), the most salient fact is that there have been few successful evaluations. Campos et al (2014) report that as of 2012 there had never been a successful randomized evaluation of a matching grant program, and seven World Bank-funded evaluations had recently been derailed because of political pressures and other implementation difficulties. Bruhn et al. (2013) evaluated a program offering subsidized consulting services for small and medium enterprises in Mexico, and found positive impacts on sales, profits and productivity but not employment. McKenzie et al. (2015) report on an experiment in Yemen that gave $10,000 as a 50 percent subsidy towards the cost of business services to small and medium enterprises, and find positive short-term impacts on product innovation, marketing and adoption of accounting systems, but they were not able to look at longer-term impacts because of political instability. We are aware of at least one other World Bank project currently underway that is aiming to do a randomized evaluation of a matching-grant program evaluating a high-impact entrepreneurship program of the Mexican government. But it is safe to say that the randomized evaluation of matching-grant programs is an under-researched area. There is a small literature on randomized evaluations of cash grants for firms (which have not required co-investment by the firms). In a sample of very small firms in Sri Lanka, De Mel et al. (2008) find that cash transfers generate high returns. McKenzie (2015) evaluates a massive business-plan competition in Nigeria, and finds positive impacts on survival rates, employment, sales and profits for firms that win the competition and receive cash transfers. Other studies have found mixed evidence on the effects of cash transfers. Little is known about the importance of the co-investment aspect of matching-grant programs relative to cash-transfer programs. Turning to non-randomized studies, the closest studies to the current proposal are of a previous generation of matching grants to promote exports in Tunisia, referred to as the FAMEX II program. Using a matching difference-in-differences design, Gourdon et. al. (2011) found that the program initially had positive impacts on export growth, but using a similar design Cadot et al (2016) found that the positive effects vanished within three years. Both papers also note the methodological challenges faced by “ex post” evaluations such as theirs and called for an evaluation design built into an export matching-grant program “ex ante”, which our current proposal aim to design. There have been several other non-randomized studies of export promotion policies in developing countries. For instance, using difference-in-differences (with and without matching), Volpe and Carballo (2008) analyze export-promotion efforts in Peru and find positive effects, especially on the extensive margin (increases in the number of products exported and the number of destinations served.) Alvarez and Crespi (2000) examine the effects of several export-promotion instruments in Chile (exporter committees, presence in international fairs, and utilization of business information systems) in a fixed-effects framework and find positive effects on the intensive margin (increased exports). Additional non-randomized studies of matching grants of various forms include Crespi et al. (2011), which studies an innovation program in Colombia that showed positive effects on product diversification and labor productivity;
8
and Castillo et al. (2011), which studies a matching grant for technical assistance in Argentina and showed positive effects on employment and wages. A well-known concern with studies in this vein is that it is hard to rule out definitively that there is selection bias in assignment to the program, with better firms more likely to receive the matching grants. One additional study that bears mention is Atkin et al (2016), which randomly allocated a different form of export promotion: actual initial contacts with a foreign buyer to Egyptian rug producers. The authors find positive effects on the quality of the rugs produced (even identical types of rugs produced under controlled conditions) and measured productivity. While this project is ingenious, the form of export promotion studied is likely to be available only in very particular settings where the cooperation of foreign buyers can be secured. Matching grants, in contrast, are likely to be applicable in a much broader array of contexts and can potentially be scaled up in a way that the Atkin et al intervention cannot. Overall, there is a clear need for additional rigorous evidence on the impacts of matching grant programs and export promotion programs, and in particular on matching grants targeting increased exports; our current proposal aim to address this gap in the literature.
4. POLICY RELEVANCE (1/2 page or less)
Assess the extent to which the study may influence policy and institutional capacity at the national, regional,
and international level. Explain how you plan to track the policy influence of your study (see Appendix on
i2i sample indicators of IE influence on program/policy. These indicators, which are currently under revision,
will be collected through Grant Monitoring and Reporting on annual basis from all i2i supported IEs).
This IE tackles the questions that lie at the heart of Tunisian development strategy of how to promote economic
development through high value added export. As the new empirical literature on international trade argues, it is
important to understand the factors that influence a country’s transition from the production of low-quality to high-
quality products since the production of high-quality goods is often viewed as a pre-condition for export success
and, ultimately, for economic development. There is substantial evidence to suggest that firms in high income
countries produce and export higher quality goods than those in less-developed nations. Some recent studies also
indicate the positive benefits of import tariff liberalization on firm’s product quality upgradation and innovation (e.g.
Amiti and Khandelwal, 2011). However, there is not much rigorous evidence on what firm level supports the
government can provide to enable them to transit from low-value added to high-value added exports (product
diversification) or accessing new export markets (market diversification). This IE attempts to fill this gap.
The findings from our IE also expect to influence the government’s design of the matching grant scheme for
subsequent years. TASDIR+ plans to run until 2021. Therefore, the IE findings from the initial years of the matching
grant scheme will greatly benefit the government to make any necessary adjustment to the subsequent years to
make the scheme more effective.
Finally, as articulated in Campos et. al (2013), while matching grants are one of the most common policy instruments
in WBG operations to provide firm-level support, we have very limited rigorous evidence on the effectiveness of this
instrument. As discussed in Section 3, while there have been some attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of
matching grant using quasi-experimental methods, unfortunately non-experimental methods have severe limitation
9
in dealing with selection issues for matching grant programs because of inherently forward looking behavior of both
the firms and the government – firms self-select into whether or not to apply for the program, and then government
selects which firms receive the grants. Firms that receive support are more likely to be perceived (by the firm and by
government) as having faster growth potential in the future than firms that do not apply or do not get selected, even
when they are observably similar in terms of current size and recent growth history. As such, matching on observable
characteristics and differencing out of firm fixed effects is still unlikely to control for the differences between the
firms which participate in the program and those which do not. Similarly, while in theory the regression-discontinuity
designs could be of use, in practice the programs often suffer from lack of proper use of the selection criteria
(mistargeting), very small sample of firms close enough to the scoring threshold, or the endogeneity issues related
to the selection threshold itself. Thus providing rigorous evidence on the effect of matching grant on firm’s export
performance, this IE aims to contribute to the design of the future matching grant schemes of the governments
supported by WBG and other donors.
5. THEORY OF CHANGE (E) (1 Figure and 2-3 paragraphs)
Describe the main elements of the intervention, and the hypothesized causal chain from inputs, through
activities and outputs, to outcomes.
Describe the main assumptions and other factors underlying the causal chain (internal and external).
TASDIR+ aims to provide 50-70 percent co-financing to the firms to help firms improve their export competitiveness.
Its scope is fairly broad. Some examples of activities of the firms that would be eligible for financial support under
TASDIR+ includes (i) the cost to obtain special accreditation for exporting goods and services that are required by
the importing countries, (ii) cost of development and marketing new product; (iii) cost of hiring and/or capacity
building of workers, (iv) cost of opening up the office in destination market, and so on. The scheme has also a focus
on supporting women entrepreneurs (at least 20% of the matching grant fund will be allocated to target women
entrepreneurs) and entrepreneurs from the lagging regions.
Given this scope, the key elements of our impact evaluation design include the following treatments:
Treatment 1: export subsidy rebates to encourage increased export volume, exporting new product variety,
and/or exporting to new (advanced) markets
Treatment 2: subsidy for obtaining required quality standards certificates and accreditation to export to
new market or new product variety
The underlying idea for first intervention is that firms may not be efficient enough to compete on price to new
markets/new product space with more efficient competitors from other countries; hence the export subsidy rebate
would make Tunisian firms’ pricing more competitive in international markets. If exporting makes those firms more
efficient either by moving them along the production possibility frontier or expanding such frontier then a short-
term intervention can have long lasting consequences, and that is precisely the overarching objective of TASDIR+,
i.e., to increase export in a sustainable fashion over time to new markets and/or to high value products.
Second intervention will focus on short term liquidity constraint and/or investment under uncertainty situation.
Exporting to advance economies often requires obtaining necessary quality certification and accreditations, which
the cash strapped firms might not be able to obtain, or the firms may not be willing to undertake such costly
10
investment as success to enter into the advanced market/product space is uncertain. Thus by providing subsidy to
the firms to obtain the necessary certificates and accreditation, we aim to either overcome the potential liquidity
constraints of the firms or to reduce their investment risks, which could be the reasons why firms are not exploiting
the potential advanced market/product space. If these are the binding constraints for the firms, then the second
intervention would help unleash the productivity gains of the firms from entering into the advanced market/product
space.
Thus the simplified theory of change as depicted in figure 1 is as follows. The underlying assumption is that there
are a number of Tunisian firms with innovative ideas of either exporting their products to new markets or upgrading
their current products to higher value added variety for either existing or new markets. But the investment required
for this is risky as the firms do not know ex ante if they will be successful and hence the firms are either unwilling to
invest in this venture or do not have enough resources (cash constrained and credit market imperfection) to invest
in case they are willing. Matching grant interventions will address this suboptimal investment under uncertainty or
credit constraint and thus enable firms to export new high value product, or to new market, or both. This export
success in turn will make the firms more productive. Thus, another critical underlying assumption is that the
matching grant intervention is addressing a critical binding constraint that is preventing these firms from innovation
and/or exporting to the new markets.
The initial input in this theory of change is sufficient number of firms with proposals for developing high value
product variety or to access new markets. The immediate output is firms’ investment in areas that they view critical
to increase export volume, export to new markets, and/or export new/high value product variety, and for second
intervention, obtaining the needed certificates and accreditation. The immediate outcome would be increased in
export volume, export of new product variety, and/or exporting to new (advanced) markets. The medium term
outcomes would be increased firm productivity and growth through expansion of the firms’ production possibility
frontier.
Figure 1: Theory of Change
Inputs: Tunisian firms with potential for increased exports, developing new product variety for export, and/or
with the potential to export to new (advanced) markets.
Activities: Firms’ self-selection into most relevant matching grant window for their export success and developing
business plan to use the matching grant financing for either increasing export, exporting new product variety or
exporting to new market.
Outputs: Firms investment (co-financed by matching grant for 2nd intervention) to improve the relevant export
performance.
Intermediate outcomes: Firms’ increased export, firms’ export of new product variety to existing or new
(advanced) markets; firms’ export to new market.
11
A theory of change describes how the intervention is expected to affect the outcomes of interest (based on theory)
but it does not demonstrate whether the intervention causes the observed outcomes. It usually includes the most
important outcomes (intermediate and final) that are critical to the causal chain, even if not all will be measured (see
Appendix for example).
A theory of change sets the structure for the hypotheses, evaluation questions, and outcomes of interest. It also lists
key indicators for developing the implementation protocol and IE monitoring system aimed at understanding what
is being evaluated, and whether the critical intervention activities/components were implemented/taken up as
Data collection (Baseline) Cleaned data Dictionaries
December-January, 2017
First data analysis Presentation Data file Do files Baseline report
March 2017
Implementation of intervention aligned to evaluation
Rollout plan Monitoring reports verifying treatment and control status
Interventions will be on a rolling window basis in every quarter or so from January 2017 onwards until December 2018 or so.
Follow-up data collection plan
TORs Questionnaire
Annual firm survey in 2017, 2018, and 2019; Customs data collection on a quarterly basis from March 2017 onwards till June 2021.
Data collection (Follow-up) Cleaned data Dictionaries
As above.
Final report and policy notes
Technical note Policy note Data file Do files
December 2019
Dissemination of findings Presentations June 2019 onwards
12.3 BUDGET
(1 paragraph)
Present total budget and disaggregated by staff time, data collection, and travel. Include all sources of
funding, both Bank-executed and client-executed (BB resources, trust fund and grants, FBS, EFO, project
financing for the IE, such as data collection, and other client financing). Estimate and include all
research/staff time (not only the time charged).
Table 4. Total Budget per Category
Category USD %
Staff 48,655 10
STC 145,990 29
Data Col lection 240,000 48
Travel 65,000 13
Total 499,645 100.00
Total Budget per Category
21
The main sources of funding are the DIME i2i preparation grant ($25,000), three years of DIME i2i implementation grant funding ($50,000 x 3), and WBG Project Supervision Fund (approximately $200,000). The remaining costs are covered by work program time allocation of the PI and Co-PIs from their respective employers.
Attach detailed budget (see excel file template).
Excel file attached.
13. PLAN FOR USING DATA AND EVIDENCE FROM THE STUDY (1 paragraph)
Describe communication, participation, and dissemination strategy (potential users of findings, media
channels) at all stages of the IE (design, baseline analysis, mid-corrections, follow-up analysis, and final
results).
As mentioned above, we will deploy communication campaign in association with the government counterpart to
raise awareness and encourage wider participation from the businesses to two intervention arms. As the application
process will be continued 2-3 times (or even more) a year for a period over 2-3 years, the interim findings from
different rounds of application processes will be used for policy dialogues with the government by the WBG team
and for media and communication campaign by the government counterpart. The research paper based on the IE
will be published as World Bank Policy Research Working Paper and will be submitted for publication to the relevant
academic journal(s). We will also present the findings in relevant workshops organized by the WBG and academia.
REFERENCES Alvarez, R. and Crespi, G. 2000. “Exporter Performance and Promotion Instruments: Chilean Empirical Evidence.”
Estudios de Economía 27: Universidad de Chile.
Amiti, Mary and Amit Khandelwal. 2011. “Import Competition and Quality Upgrading.” Review of Economics and
Statistics.
Atkin, David, Khandelwal, Amit and Osman, Adam. 2016. “Exporting and Firm Performance: Evidence from a
Randomized Experiment” Unpub. paper, MIT.
Bruhn, M., Karlan, D.S. and Schoar, A., 2013. The impact of consulting services on small and medium enterprises:
Evidence from a randomized trial in Mexico. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, (6508).
Cadot, Olivier, Ana M. Fernandes, Julien Gourdon, and Aaditya Mattoo (2015). “Are the benefits of export support
durable? Evidence from Tunisia.” Journal of International Economics, forthcoming.
Campos, Francisco, Aidan Coville, Ana Fernandes, Markus Goldstein and David McKenzie (2014). "Learning from the
Experiments that Never Happened: Lessons from Trying to Conduct Randomized Evaluations of Matching Grant
Programs in Africa," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, vol. 33, pp. 4-24.
Castillo, Victoria, Alessandro Maffioli, Sofá Rojo and Rodolfo Stucchi (2011) “Innovation policy and employment:
Evidence from an impact evaluation in Argentina”, IDB Working Paper no. IDBTN-341
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Crespi, Gustavo, Alessandro Maffioli, and Marcela Melendez (2011) “Public support to innovation: The Colciencas
experience”, IDB Working Paper no. IDB-TN-264
De Mel, Suresh, David McKenzie and Christopher Woodruff (2008) “Returns to Capital in Microenterprises: Evidence
from a Field Experiment”, Quarterly Journal of Economics 123(4): 1329-72.
Gourdon, Julien, Jean Michel Marchat, Siddharth Sharma and Tara Vishwanath (2011) “Can matching grants promote
exports? Evidence from Tunisia’s FAMEX II program”, pp. 81-106 in Olivier Cadot, Ana Fernandes, Julien Gourdon
and Aaditya Mattoo (eds.) Where to spend the next million? Applying impact evaluation to trade assistance. World
Bank: Washington, D.C.
Karlan, Dean, Ryan Knight and Christopher Udry (2014) “Consulting and Capital Experiments with Microenterprise
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