DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP SUPPORT SERVICES IN JAMAICA
Training and Technical Assistance programs are one of the policy responses to overcome the barriers that preclude entrepreneurship and billions of dollars are spent subsidizing entrepreneurship programs all around the world. There are several arguments for subsidizing business training and technical assistance programs. They are mainly based on inefficiencies in allocation and/or distribution generated by imperfect markets (Fairlie et al., 2014). Imperfections can be observed, for example, in credit, labor, insurance, and human capital markets.

The arguments for subsidizing training programs have been difficult to evaluate because a simple comparison between trained and non-trained entrepreneurs is biased by the fact that the two groups differ in many observable and unobservable dimensions (e.g. trained entrepreneurs might be more able, more willing to take risks and might have better outcomes even without the training). Therefore, we still know little about the overall effectiveness of entrepreneurship training or whether it can mitigate market failures.
The goal of the proposed experimental evaluation is to test the effects of two different types of trainings and their combination: Training 1 will focus on non-cognitive skills or successful entrepreneurial traits (attitudes, personalities and aspirations), Training 2 will focus on business practices (such as planning, accounting, finance, marketing, etc.) and Training 3 will be a combination of training 1 and 2 either in a “blended” version or, preferably, as a sequence.

For this purpose CTI has identified the Jamaica Business development Corporation as a ideal partner in the Caribbean. The Jamaica Business Development Corporation (JBDC) has been very active in the area of providing training and technical assistance for the development of newly created firms. For this reason, the “MSME and Entrepreneurship Policy” (2013) recently developed by the Jamaican Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce identifies the JBDC as the agency that will lead the process of training MSMEs in the areas of business practices (business plan preparation, finance, marketing, product management) and Entrepreneurship Skills Development