Florian Anselm Münch

Exporting provides business opportunities with high returns but requires high managerial knowledge and skills, the network and confidence to create international contacts, and the scale to overcome fixed costs. All of which female entrepreneurs tend to lack. We conduct an RCT to test an intervention that tackles these problems simultaneously. Over two years, export-interested female entrepreneurs in complementary sectors received support to establish a consortium, a legally connected group of firms, to cooperate in exporting. In addition, firms receive business and export consulting. At midline, two-thirds of the female entrepreneurs decided to become consortium members. Consortia members doubled their regular contact with other female entrepreneurs, gained entrepreneurial confidence, improved management practices, and increased their companies‘ profit. While export outcomes have not increased yet, consortia members are more likely to know Tunisia’s trade agreements, have potential foreign clients and invest in their exports.

Governments spend over a billion US dollars annually on firm support programs, yet application rates are low and outcomes modest. Attracting enough and the right firms may alter the program’s effect and statistical power to detect it. Yet, we document that most firm program evaluations don’t report recruitment strategies. We conduct two email experiments involving 5000 SMEs while recruiting for two export support programs in Tunisia, tracking each communication channel’s contribution to registrations. In experiment 1, we find goal-specific messages targeting firms‘ supply or demand side constraints attract fewer but better-performing firms. In experiment 2, we find an influencer video emphasizing program benefits attracts better-performing female-led firms, while reducing participation costs via free childcare attracts less-performing firms managed by younger female entrepreneurs with children. Finally, we show open communication channels attract more under-represented firms. In general, the findings suggest recruitment strategies substantially impact sample size and composition.