David Roodman posts a review of recent high-quality studies of microfinance. Note that prior to these fairly recent studies, most impact studies in this area had serious flaws, as Mr. Roodman notes and as we argue in our year-old review of this area. The studies Mr. Roodman discusses are randomized controlled trials, and so their…
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GiveWell grant: Open application
We welcome applications for $250,000 in funding for economic empowerment in sub-Saharan Africa, to be disbursed by 12/31/2009. Interested charities should read the full details of our application process and then submit our first-round application. Why we are making this grant: in 2008 we received $250,000 earmarked specifically for regranting to a top organization working…
First randomized controlled trial of microfinance project
Has been released – available here (PDF). We haven’t read it yet, but recommend David Roodman’s summary. Based on other papers of Mr. Roodman’s that I’ve read, I believe he generally is a good bet to ask all the questions we would ask and then some, and do an excellent job putting his views in…
Mistargeted microfinance?
There are many studies attempting to gauge microloans’ impact on borrowers, but most suffer from the problem of selection bias: by comparing participants and non-participants, they may be picking up other differences between these groups (for example, people who participate in microloan programs may be wealthier to begin with, so a study showing that they…
Financial Times on microfinance (and the need for better info about it)
PDF here (via Innovators for Poverty Action, whose research is featured). After discussing the Karlan/Zinman study showing benefits for loans (which we summarize here), it continues: Karlan is the first to warn against extrapolating too much from a single experiment. “This is the last thing in the world that I would use to develop policy,”…
Microfinance/education program didn’t work as expected
A reader was good enough to send in a Lancet article (free registration required for full text) about a well-designed study of a combination microfinance/education program in South Africa. Study design, strengths and weaknesses A program consisting of both loans and group meetings was rolled out to 8 villages in rural South Africa, but the…