IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/deveco/v179y2026ics0304387825001968.html

Complementing business training with access to finance: Evidence from SMEs in Kenya

Author

Listed:
  • Ashraf, Anik
  • Lyons, Elizabeth

Abstract

This paper investigates the complementarity between business training and timely access to financial capital for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Kenya. All participants in the business support program we study are offered training. One-third of participants are offered loans immediately after training (Concurrent Loan group), one-third are offered loans six weeks after training (Delayed Loan group), and the remaining third are offered loans after another four weeks (Control group). While a long time lag may reduce knowledge retention and application among SMEs, concurrent access to loans and associated business spending may divert the entrepreneurs’ attention away from improving business practices. We find evidence for the latter in both intention-to-treat and treatment-on-the-treated estimates. While SMEs in both Control and Delayed Loan groups improve their business practices, SMEs in the Concurrent Loan group who take loans do not improve their practices at all. Moreover, entrepreneurs who take loans spend less time on their businesses and experience declines in their business revenue.

Suggested Citation

  • Ashraf, Anik & Lyons, Elizabeth, 2026. "Complementing business training with access to finance: Evidence from SMEs in Kenya," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:deveco:v:179:y:2026:i:c:s0304387825001968
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103645
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387825001968
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103645?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship
    • M53 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Training

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:deveco:v:179:y:2026:i:c:s0304387825001968. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/devec .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.