4/29/2009 6:50:00 AM By
E.J. Reedy
The World Bank recently completed what looked to be an interesting event on "Measurement, Promotion and Impact of Access to Financial Services." There are several interesting papers, including one looking at experimental survey work in Ghana by Cull and Scott that examines the types of financial questions one might need to ask the head of a household rather than each individual in the household to get an accurate picture of financial services used, as well as looking at issues of asking about specific products used rather than companies. Household surveys can play an important part in entrepreneurship research, particularly for those looking at the self-employed, but then ironically, also for those looking at the very successful entrepreneurs or angel investors.
One additional takeaway of the event was the need for more accurate and comparable data across countries, not just at the time of crisis, but in an ongoing manner. This is a similar problem we see in developed economies and will be addressing at an upcoming OECD event.