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Displaying all posts under the topic of Poverty
May 24, 2013
Hot Topics in the Field
Below are the latest and greatest articles, reports, and research from the field of microfinance and economic development. From remittances in Asia to microinsurance in Africa, it’s definitely been an interesting week!
May 23, 2013
Links We Like
This is the early edition of Links We LIke for those traveling for the long weekend! Please feel free to add your suggestions via comments to expand our weekend reading list.
In last week’s blog post, I suggested that self-reported data should be supplemented with objective sources of information from independent third-party entities. Sometimes, however, independent data sources simply aren’t available and researchers have no choice but to base their analysis on self-reported data. Under these circumstances, some data collection methodologies might be more useful than others in ensuring that self-reported data are reliable.
Half of the adults in the world are “unbanked” -- about 2.5 billion people. That’s the starting point of a new book, Banking the World: Empirical Foundations of Financial Inclusion, published by the MIT Press.
Program evaluations and policy proposals are only as good as the data upon which they are based. Although we all know this to be true, discussions about the reliability of data, especially self-reported data, have only recently emerged in the field of development economics.
It's an important moment for the microfinance movement. At a time when real progress has been made in making financial services available to the poor, questions abound about the effectiveness of microfinance as a way of helping people escape from poverty. The priveleged position microfinance has enjoyed among poverty interventions and social investment is eroding. Charting the right path forward for microfinance--and effective investments in reducing poverty--requires a closer look at how microfinance really has worked.
April 17, 2013
In Conversation with Economist Rohini Pande
Timothy Ogden and Economist Rohini Pande discuss how standard microcredit may undermine business investment in this FAI Video interview.
Transcript of the Conversation
Recently FAI hosted a discussion with Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and pioneer in the field of microfinance. The event was moderated by Jonathan Morduch and co-sponsored by NYU Wagner and NYU Stern.
Jonathan Morduch talks about the reality of the poverty in a keynote address at The College of St. Scholastica.
February 14, 2013
What’s Next: Another Repayment Crisis?
It's been over two years since the start of the great India insolvency. Four years since the Bosnia blight and No Pago Nicaragua. And nearly six years since the Morocco microfinance meltdown.
At this point, it's reasonable to say that the first global crisis in microfinance has passed. Life is on the mend.