Table 3 tabulates the distribution of the treatment and control groups across the six sectors and by firm size. We depart from the Chilean classification of SMEs based on annual sales and, instead, define firm size in terms of total employment of permanent and contractual workers – “micro” with 15 or fewer workers, “small” with 16 to 100 workers, “medium” with 101 to 250 workers, and “large” with over 250 workers. The table indicates that the treatment group is well represented in all sectors and firm sizes, making up between one-quarter and one-third of the sample in each sector-size cell.

This observation is pertinent to the impact evaluation studies reviewed earlier for two reasons. It suggests, first, that any firms randomly selected from the underlying population of firms by sector and size to serve as a control group are likely to include a high proportion of previously treated firms. A prior screening of firms for past and current program participation is essential if an appropriate control group of non-program participants is to be selected. Second, as the previous studies themselves note, selecting a control group based on observable attributes such as sector and size is likely to be inadequate; even with similar sector-size distributions, the treatment and control groups can have very different pre-program values of sales, productivity or wages. As such, some of these studies conducted a second round of analysis to select a better matched sample of treatment and control group firms.<sup>9</sup> The linked ICS-ENIA contains rich information on a range of intermediate and final outcomes from participation in SME programs. Viewed through a program logic framework, intermediate outcomes are the short-term changes in firm behavior and practices that the program directly affects through the delivery of technical assistance and business support services and credit; the final outcomes are longer-term improvements in firm performance that firms may realize through program interventions on the intermediate outcomes. The 2004 ICS provides contemporaneous cross-section data on technology inputs and outputs, linkages with other firms and use of quality control practices, worker training and use of the SENCE tax rebate incentive. These intermediate outcomes are some of the same variables that previous evaluation studies have found to be important outcomes of participation in programs such as PROFO, FONTEC and PROCHILE. The ENIA panel contains annual data on measures of firm performance such as sales, gross value of production, employment, total compensation, and income from exports. The long-term outcomes that SME programs seek to influence typically include increased production and sales, entry into export markets, creation of new jobs, higher wages per worker, and improved labor productivity.

Table 4 provides summary statistics on these key outcome measures, comparing the means and differences in means between the treatment and control groups, and t-tests of their statistical significance. Panel A focuses on the intermediate outcome measures elicited in the 2004 ICS:

- (i) _innovation and technology inputs_ – have a foreign technology license, acquired new technology over the last 2 years, does own research and development (R&D) or via third parties, and installed new electric and numerical control (NC) equipment and machinery;

> 9 See Benavente and Crespi (2003) and Benavente, Crespi and Maffioli (2007).

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