The impact of micro-credit interventions on existing credit markets is theoretically ambiguous. Previous empirical work suggests the entry of a joint-liability lender may lead to a positive impact on the informal lending rate. This paper presents the first randomized controlled trial-based...

Microfinance is generally seen as a way to fix credit markets and unleash the productive capacities of poor people who are dependent on self-employment. The microfinance sector has grown quickly since the 1990s, paving the way for other forms of social enterprise and social investment. But...

"The Impact of Microcredit on the Poor in Bangladesh: Revisiting the Evidence," by David Roodman and Jonathan Morduch (2014) (henceforth RM) is the most recent of a sequence of papers and web postings that seeks to refute the findings of the Pitt and Khandker (1998; henceforth PK) article "The...

This paper addresses whether microcredit participants in Bangladesh are trapped in poverty and debt, as many critics have argued in recent years. Analysis of data from a long panel survey over a 20-year period confirms this is not the case, although numerous participants have been with...

"The Impact of Microcredit on the Poor in Bangladesh: Revisiting the Evidence," by David Roodman and Jonathan Morduch (2011) is the most recent of a sequence of papers and postings that seeks to refute the findings of the Pitt and Khandker (1998) article "The Impact of Group-Based Credit on Poor...

Microfinance is often criticized for not adequately addressing seasonality and hard-core poverty. In Bangladesh, a program known as PRIME was introduced in 2006 to address both concerns. Unlike regular microfinance, PRIME introduces a microfinance scheme that offers a flexible repayment schedule...

This paper reviews the prospects for long-term food security in Asia, where a significant number of malnourished individuals still live after decades of mixed progress. Evidence shows that poverty reduction on its own will not do the job of eradicating hunger, nor will only increased food...

Inequality in Latin America unambiguously declined in the 2000s. The Gini coefficient fell in 16 of the 17 countries where there are comparable data, and the change was statistically significant for all of them. Existing studies point to two main explanations for the decline in inequality: a...

This paper estimates the impact of informality on firm profits using a new firm-level survey designed specifically for this study. The survey was administered to about 1,200 firms with 50 employees or less in Ecuador's two largest cities, Quito and Guayaquil, plus two main centers of economic...

This paper compares for 13 Latin American countries the poverty and inequality impacts of cash transfer programs that are given to all children and the elderly (that is, "categorical" transfers), to programs of equal budget that are confined to the poor within each population group (that is,...