program. The lowest grant is US$628, and the highest is US$11,659. By mistake, nine entrepreneurs in Block 7, of which four were cash grants and five were matching grants beneficiaries, were granted amounts larger than the ceiling of US$8,000.<sup>9</sup> As intended, the distributions of the grant amounts are nearly identical across both treatment groups.

**Table 2. Summary statistics of grants (US$) across groups**

|Group|Business<br>(#)|Mean<br>(US$)|Median<br>(US$)|Standard<br>deviation<br>(US$)|Minimum<br>(US$)|Maximum<br>(US$)|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Cash|400|3,421|3,110|1,515|1,020|11,273|
|Matching|400|3,443|3,161|1,535|1,002|11,659|

_Source:_ Data from MEBF’s report on the public lottery (2019).

Since the distribution of requests significantly deviated from a uniform distribution across the seven strata, the number of winners that had to be drawn was determined in each stratum according to the share of all requests (cash and matching grants) in that stratum, that is, in each stratum, the number of winners is proportional to the number of applicants.

The sample size of 1,200 entrepreneurs, that is, 400 per group, had been chosen based on power calculations and cost considerations. A sample size of 400 firms per group allows detecting effects in the order of about 0.20 standard deviations, with at least 80 percent power. Effects of 0.20 standard deviations and less are considered ‘small’ in the literature. If the calculations account in addition for an attrition rate of 20 percent, the minimum detectable effect size increases to about 0.22 standard deviations. If a power of 90 percent is imposed, the measurable effects increase to 0.23 standard deviations and 0.26 standard deviations, respectively. Given, that we have baseline data, at least for the existing firms, we can also estimate Analysis of Covariance specifications (ANCOVA) and use a large set of covariates which further adds to power.

On top of the quantitative surveys, we also used qualitative methods to probe into contextual factors, especially focus group discussions with firm owners and in-depth interviews with staff of MEBF and Bagrépole and also some grant beneficiaries. At baseline, these interviews were conducted 12 months after the quantitative survey and at midline in the same month as the quantitative survey. Moreover, we can draw on monitoring data on program demand, delivery of grants and services, actual program takeup, and process information. All sources taken together provide a rich data set complementing the survey data which can help understand the mechanisms linking program inputs to outputs and ultimate impacts and, more generally, can help validate our results.

# _4.2 Balance tests_

Table A.1 and Table A.2 in the appendix show baseline characteristics and pairwise balance tests across all three groups. Table A.1 focuses on characteristics of the entrepreneur and Table A.2 on characteristics of the firm. Table A.1 shows that in our sample, entrepreneurs are on average about 42 years old, a bit less than half are women, most are married, about 55 percent are the head of their household and have about five to six children, a bit more than 20 percent have completed secondary school and have on

> 9 The four cash grant beneficiaries received US$11,273, US$11,000, US$9,291, and US$8,741. The five matching grant beneficiaries received US$11,659, US$11,091, US$10,009, US$9,436, and US$9,364.

11