Description:
Economic growth does not contribute enough to job creation. As shown in Merotto, weber and Aterido (2018), a bit more than half of growth episodes contributed to reducing unemployment. A significant part of this relationship between growth and jobs is centered around firms. Firms are more likely to hire when growing. For that reason, any discussion on how to get more jobs needs to respond to questions about firm performance. This review discusses the barriers to firm growth and performance, namely limited access to finance, frictions on the labor market, lack of know-how, limited access to technology and the role of markets. It synthesizes the main lessons on firm growth from firm-level experiments that address these constraints and when possible, focuses on the impacts of these interventions on jobs. The objective is to provide evidence that can guide practitioners who seek to promote jobs in the context of private sector development programming