December 2011
By Jonathan Bauchet, Cristobal Marshall, Laura Starita, and Anna Yalouris
Latest Findings from Randomized Evaluations of Microfinance
In 2009, the results from two microcredit impact studies in Hyderabad, India, and Manila, the Philippines were released to mixed responses (Banerjee, Duflo, Glennerster, and Kinnan 2010; Karlan and Zinman 2011). Some media declared microfinance a failure (Bennett 2009). Many in the microfinance community dismissed these randomized studies as too limited to be a true reflection of the entire sector.