Business Registration in Malawi Experimental Data and Replication Files 2011-2015 (Malawi)

Abstract

We conduct a randomized experiment in Malawi to test three alternative approaches to formalizing firms: a) assisting firms to obtain a business registration certificate that offers access to formal markets but imposes no tax obligations; b) assisting firms to obtain both this business registration and tax registration; and c) supplementing the assistance to obtain business registration with a bank information session intended to help firms utilize one of the key potential benefits of formalizing. This dataset consists of a baseline, four rounds of follow-up surveys, administrative data, and replication files for replicating the results of the paper "How should the government bring small firms into the formal system? Experimental evidence from Malawi"