pure control markets and individuals assigned to the control group in treatment markets, totaling 2,365 firms, in our sample. One year after the baseline survey, between June and October 2014, the first follow-up survey was conducted, which was supplemented by a rapid short survey that was conducted between November 2014 and February 2015, and which we mainly used to obtain information on firms not found in the first follow-up. The second follow-up survey took place between February 2016 and July 2016. Further details on the survey, intervention, and study design can be found in McKenzie and Puerto (2017). We used all four survey waves, joining information from the first follow-up survey and the subsequent short follow-up survey and treating them as one round, hence including three rounds of data from this survey in our sample.

Using information from round to round, we coded _survival_ in each round to one if:

- the owner answered that she was still operating the same business as in the previous round; or

- the owner was said by a proxy respondent to still be operating a business, if the respondent refused to participate in the survey or could not be located.

We coded _survival_ in each round to zero if:

- the owner answered that she had closed the business and was now operating a different business; or

- the owner answered that she was no longer operating a business; or

- the owner said that she had never operated a business; or

- the owner said or was said by a proxy respondent, not to be in business anymore or to have left the country, if the respondent refused to participate in the survey or could not be located; or

- the owner had died.

We coded _newfirmstart_ to one, if the owner answered that she had closed the business and was now operating a different business. If the owner answered either that she was still operating the same business as in the previous round, or that she was no longer operating a business, we coded _newfirmstart_ to one. In the remaining cases _newfirmstart_ was coded to missing.

To transform the coding into survival to a given round for firms that were operating at baseline, and to deal with some inconsistencies that were due to the combination of data from the first follow-up and the subsequent short follow-up, we recoded _survival_ in a final step. If _survival_ to round 2, as well as _newfirmstart_ to round 2 had been coded to one, we recoded _survival_ to round 2 to zero, assuming that these were either cases in which the original business had survived to the first follow-up, but not to the subsequent short follow-up survey, and the owner was operating a new firm by the time of the short follow-up survey, or cases in which the owner had closed and opened new firm in the first follow-up and then the business was coded as surviving in the short subsequent follow-up survey, because this new business continued to be open. If a business had been coded to be closed by round 2, but survived to round 3 and a new firm had been started by round 2, we recoded _survival_ to round 3 to zero.

# _Malawi Business Registration Impact Evaluation Survey (MWBRIE)_

The Malawi Business Registration Impact Evaluation Survey (MWBRIE) was designed to evaluate the impact of a randomized experiment designed to increase business formalization in Malawi. The survey was conducted on a sample of 3,002 informal firms in urban Lilongwe and Blantyre, which had been identified through a listing of over 100 business centers (i.e. concentrations of firms including industrial parks, markets, streets with shops, set of workshops, etc.). As a result the sample does not include household-based enterprises.

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