which is what these assistance sessions were designed to alleviate.

# **III Data**

Firm-level data were collected at baseline, mid-line (6 months after the intervention), and end-line (18 months after the intervention). The baseline assessed business owner background characteristics, business characteristics, and the use of business practices.<sup>18</sup>

## **A Summary Statistics**

Summary statistics from the baseline survey are presented in Table 1. Columns (1)-(2) provide mean and standard-deviation values for the total sample of 1301 business, while columns (3)-(7) present the mean separately for businesses assigned to control and each of the four treatment groups. The last four columns of Table 1 present the p-values for tests of differences in means between each of the treatment groups and control group. Most (66 out of 68) p-values are large (well above 0.10). We also run a Multinomial Logit specification regressing assignment to treatment on baseline characteristics and test for joint orthogonality with a Chi-Square test. The p-value of this test is 0.857, which also suggests that the randomization was effective.

According to the statistics in Table 1, shop owners in our sample are mostly female (71%) and are 45.27 years old on average. Educational backgrounds are mixed, with the mean educational attainment of 9 years of schooling. The average entrepreneur is risk averse, and is neither patient nor impatient.<sup>19</sup> The average firm has a size of 13.22 sq. mts, 13.6 years of age, employs two workers, receives about 50 customers per day and has monthly sales of 4786.16 USD PPP and monthly profits of 907.73 USD PPP.<sup>20</sup> Only 20% of the businesses report having a tax ID and 18% has applied for a loan in the last 12 months. Finally, the average adoption rate of business practices included in the handbook is 35% at baseline, compared to 18% for practices not covered in the handbook.

## **B Survey Attrition**

There were two sources of survey attrition. Some shops closed down and a few others refused to be part of the midline or endline survey. Table 2 presents regression analysis on survey attrition. Columns (1) and (2) study differential attrition based on refusals both at midline and endline, respectively. Columns (3) and (4) repeat the analysis for attrition based on the shop being closed, also at midline and endline.

Overall, attrition is very low. We were able to reach 92% of the sample at midline and 81% of the sample at endline, and the small attrition rates are not correlated with treatment status. Moreover, columns (1) and (2) show that there was no differential attrition by treatment, as all the

> 18Appendix Table A10 shows the list of the business practices measured in the surveys.

> 19Risk attitude is measured with the answer to the question: “Some people usually avoid taking any risk, others are generally fully prepared to take risks. Please imagine a yard stick from 0 to 10. This time 0 means you usually avoid taking any risk and 10 means you are generally fully prepared to take risks.” Time preferences are measured in a similar way: “Some people usually want to have things now rather than later, others are generally willing to wait a long time. Now, please imagine a yardstick from 0 to 10. 0 means you usually want things now rather than later and 10 means you are generally willing to wait.”

> 20The profit and sales figures are winsorized at 5% on both tails. Profits are calculated by aggregating all costs up and then calculating sales minus total costs. This applies some of the suggestions on how to calculate more accurate profits from (Anderson et al., 2019)

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