of successful practices. We hypothesize that these two facilitation methods work through different channels.

The _Documentary_ treatment relies on observing and learning from the successful experience of others. An emerging literature highlights the importance of role models in promoting positive behavior changes, especially among poor populations in the developing world (for a review, see La Ferrara, 2016). Similarly, Munshi (2004) highlights the importance of observing similar others for social learning in the context of the Indian Green Revolution. As Ray (2006, p.2) states directly: “Looking at the experiences of individuals similar to me is like running an experiment with better controls, and therefore has better content in informing my decisions.” Not surprisingly, exposure to (successful) role models has been found to affect fertility and divorce in Brazil (Chong and La Ferrara, 2009; La Ferrara et al., 2012), financial knowledge and financial behavior of households in South Africa (Berg and Zia, 2017), aspirations and forward-looking behavior in rural Ethiopia (Bernard et al., 2014), and students’ exam performance in Uganda (Riley, 2017). In this study, we specifically test whether successful peers can facilitate the adoption of profitable business practices among urban business owners by unlocking this emotional channel of learning.

In comparison, the _Assistance_ treatment relies on learning by doing and facilitation by a trained enumerator on the content of the handbook. The local and light touch nature of the facilitation differentiates us from Bruhn et al. (2010) who find significant positive effects of formal management consulting on productivity and profits among Mexican small and medium enterprises, and corresponding improvements in financial and accounting practices. Our work is further related to Carpena et al. (2017), Brooks et al. (2018), and Lafortune et al. (2018), who make use of counseling to complement financial education among households and find positive impacts on financial decision-making.

# **B Study Setting**

This study is based in Jakarta, Indonesia. With a population of 10.1 million in inner Jakarta and an urban area of around 30 million (“DKI Jakarta”), Jakarta is the largest city in South-East Asia and the economic center of Indonesia. In 2015, the city generated a nominal GDP of almost one-sixth of the total nominal GDP of Indonesia (Statistics Indonesia, 2016).

Our sample consists of traditional retail shops in Jakarta, locally called _Warung_ or _Toko Kelontong_ . Most of the shop owners in our sample are situated in residential areas or adjacent to “wet markets” for meat, fish, and vegetables.<sup>8</sup> Our baseline analysis shows a spread of 24 different product categories offered by shop owners and the average shop owner selling a variety of them. 71% of the sample lists tobacco and cigarettes as their top 3 most sold product and 50% lists this category as their top selling product. Out of the shops that do not sell tobacco and cigarettes; rice, gas and petrol, and soft drinks are the main products on sale. Less than 5% of shops list fruits and vegetables or meat and fish as their top 3 main selling products. 9% of the sample list eggs in their top 3, but only 2.5% list it as their top product. We focus on these types of shop owners because they are ubiquitous in Indonesia as well as in other developing countries. Furthermore, such retail businesses make up a large fraction of all MSEs in Indonesia: about 22% of all employees in MSEs work in retail and hospitality which makes it the second largest sector after agriculture (Indonesian Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs Indonesia, 2011).

> 8Appendix Figure 1 shows pictures of two typical shops in our sample, representative in both size and appearance.

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