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NBER Working Paper series, Working Paper 19740, http://www.nber.org/papers/w19740, National Bureau of Economic Research ; A large share of the poor in developing countries run small enterprises, often earning low incomes. This paper explores whether the poor performance of businesses can be explained by a lack of basic business skills. We randomized the offer of a free, 48-hour business skills course to female entrepreneurs in rural Mexico. We find that those assigned to treatment earn higher profits, have larger revenues, serve a greater number of clients, are more likely to use formal accounting techniques, and more likely to be registered with the government. Indirect treatment effects on those entrepreneurs randomized out of the program, yet living in treatment villages, are economically meaningful, yet imprecisely measured. We present a simple model of experience and learning that helps interpret our results, and consistent with the theoretical predictions, we find that "low-quality" entrepreneurs are the most likely to quit their business post-treatment, and that the positive impacts of the treatment are increasing in entrepreneurial quality.

This paper explores whether the poor performance of many micro-enterprises can be explained by a lack of basic business skills. We randomized the offer of a free, 48-hour business skills course to female entrepreneurs in rural Mexico. We find that those assigned to treatment earn higher profits, have larger revenues, serve a greater number of clients, are more likely to use formal accounting techniques, and more likely to be registered with the government. Economically significant indirect treatment effects on those entrepreneurs randomized out of the program, yet living in treatment villages are observed. We present a simple model that helps interpret our results, and consistent with the theoretical predic- tions, we find that entrepreneurs with lower baseline profits are the most likely to quit their business post-treatment, and that the positive impacts of the treatment are increasing in entrepreneurial quality. ; Social Science Research Council, Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres of Excellence and several institutions at Stanford University: SCID, FSI, the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research, the Graduate Research Opportunity, and SEED

This paper explores whether the poor performance of many micro-enterprises can be explained by a lack of basic business skills. We randomized the offer of a free, 48-hour business skills course to female entrepreneurs in rural Mexico. We find that those assigned to treatment earn higher profits, have larger revenues, serve a greater number of clients, are more likely to use formal accounting techniques, and more likely to be registered with the government. Economically significant indirect treatment effects on those entrepreneurs randomized out of the program, yet living in treatment villages are observed. We present a simple model that helps interpret our results, and consistent with the theoretical predictions, we find that entrepreneurs with lower baseline profits are the most likely to quit their business post-treatment, and that the positive impacts of the treatment are increasing in entrepreneurial quality.

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10242694.2017.1349365 ; We study the differential impacts of combat and humanitarian assistance/disaster relief (HA/DR) missions on the mental health of U.S. Marine Corps members. The deployment experiences of any individual Marine are plausibly random conditional on the observable characteristics which are used to assign Marines into units. Leveraging this exogenous variation, we compare the incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicide deaths among Marines who deployed to either Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF) or HA/DR missions between 2001 and 2011. We find that the hazard of PTSD is close to eight times higher among Marines returning from OEF/OIF compared to those never deployed, and just 1.33 times higher among those returning from HA/DR (and never participated in OEF/OIF). Those returning from OEF/OIF missions are 1.81 times more likely than those never deployed to die by suicide when they were still active duty, and the hazard increases to almost 3 after they have left the military. In contrast, we find no difference in the hazards of suicide death between those that deployed to only HA/DR missions and non-deployed Marines.

This abbreviated version provided by author request. ; The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(16)30304-2 ; Background U.S. military suicides have increased significantly over the past decade and currently account for almost 20% of all military deaths. We investigated the associations of a comprehensive set of time-varying risk factors with suicides among current and former service members. Methods Retrospective multivariate analysis of all U.S. military personnel between 2001-2011 (N=110,035,573 person-quarters, representing 3,795,823 service members). Outcome was death by suicide, either during service or post-separation. Cox proportional hazard models at the person-quarter level were used to examine associations of deployment, mental disorders, history of unlawful activity, stressful life events, and other demographic and service factors with suicide death. Findings The strongest predictors of suicide were current and past diagnoses of self-inflicted injuries, major depression, bipolar disorder, substance use disorder, and other mental health conditions (comparing to those with no history of diagnoses, hazard ratio, HR, ranged from 1.4 [CI, 1.14- 1.72] to 8.34 [CI, 6.71-10.37]). Compared to those never deployed, hazards were lower among the currently-deployed (HR=0.50; CI,0.40-0.61) but significantly higher in the quarters following first deployment (HR=1.51; CI, 1.17-1.96). Hazard of suicide was elevated within the first year of separation from the military (HR=2.49; CI,2.12-2.91), and remained high for those who separated 6 or more years ago (HR=1.63; CI,1.45-1.82). Interpretation Elevated hazard of suicide death varies by time-since-exposure to deployment, mental health diagnoses, and other stressful life events. Continued monitoring is particularly needed for these high-risk individuals. Additional information should be gathered to address the persistent elevated risks of suicides among service members after separation.

This paper estimates the effect of offering an expedited citizenship application process to noncitizens for joining the U.S. military. Executive Order (EO) 13269, enacted in July of 2002, allowed non-citizens to apply for U.S. citizenship immediately upon joining the military, effectively reducing the waiting time that is required to apply for citizenship from three years to one day. We identify the effect of the policy by using administrative personnel data on the universe of military enlistees between 1999 and 2010 along with a difference-in-differences strategy that uses accessions amongst citizens as the control group. Overall, we find no effect of the offer of expedited citizenship on total accessions amongst non-citizens. However, this overall null effect masks significant shifts of non-citizen enlistments out of combat intensive services and into "safer" services. These results provide the first empirical evidence about this important, and relatively costless, recruiting policy.

We estimate the relationship between psychological attributes of U.S. Army recruits soon after enlistment and their propensity to leave service. We find that those with the worst psychological health are more likely to terminate employment, and we show how identifying psychologically unfit candidates prior to their employment can reduce the likelihood of future turnover and associated personnel costs. These findings have broad application to other stressful occupations such as firefighters, policemen, and first-responders. ; This work was supported by the U.S. Department of the Army under Contract number R8FVT.