Our weekly round-up of what we've been reading online:
- Savings and the poor: A better mattress from The Economist
- More on average effect of aid vs differential impacts of aid at AIDWATCH
- "Microfinance and Social Investment" a new paper from Jonathan Conning and Jonathan Morduch
- Washington Post article on the Indian microfinance crisis and its impact on women
- “More Than 1 Billion People Are Hungry in the World” by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo and in Foreign Policy
- Bdnews24 has the dirt on Grameen from new investigative report. 7 articles herecollected by David Roodman.
- New blog on village finance
- "Linking Health and Microfinance," the potential for microfinance to promote universal healthcare in India
- First details of Grameen probe: empire of related companies illegal
- The new fad of cash transfers: what they accomplish, and what they don't at AIDWATCH
- David Roodman blogs about the truth behind an IRIN news service headline misrepresenting BRAC: Not Exactly "Pushing"
Editors’ Note: Hi, Laura and Jonathan here. A few of the pieces this week come from people who spent years up close with how poor households actually handle money, and keep coming back with something more tangled than the story usually told, and more persistent. Tim will be back for the next edition. - Laura Freschi and Jonathan Morduch