Evaluating the Impact of Entrepreneurship Edutainment in Egypt: An Experimental Approach

We measure the impact of an edutainment television programme specifically designed to promote entrepreneurship among young adult viewers in Egypt. We implemented a randomized controlled trial following a non-symmetric encouragement design and using cheap scalable incentives to measure the impact of the intervention. While the impact of the show appears otherwise more limited, we find that the good performance of female contestants improved viewers’—in particular, men’s—general perceptions of female entrepreneurs. However, despite the apparent difficulties faced by women in setting up a business, the show also led viewers to think that discrimination against women was not as important as they had previously believed, highlighting the possible distorting effect of media content.