Can Public Policy Help to Promote Micro-Enterprises Success in the Context of an Economic Downturn? The Case of Argentina

The paper introduces the question of micro enterprises success in Argentina in the context of the 2007-2008 international financial crisis that overlaps with the lagged effects of the previous domestic downturn of 2001-2002. The work focuses on three aspects of the micro enterprises that have not been sufficiently studied in the literature on emerging economies: entrepreneurial profile of the firm-owner, performance and profile of the micro-entrepreneurs benefited by public policies. Results: according to the entrepreneurial profile four groups were identified, the performance in each group was directly related to entrepreneur’s degree of dedication and inversely related to condition of being previously unemployed and public policies were found to be pro-poor biased.micro enterprise, entrepreneur, public policies, Argentina