Microcredit and small and medium enterprise (SME) finance are often pitched as alternative strategies to create employment opportunities in low‐income communities. So far, though, little is known about how employment patterns compare. We integrate evidence from three surveys in Bangladesh to...

Microlending is growing in Eastern Europe, Russia and China as a flexible means of widening access to financial services, both to help alleviate poverty and to encourage private-sector activity. We describe mechanisms that allow these programmes to successfully penetrate new segments of credit...

Expanding access to financial services holds the promise to help reduce poverty and spur economic development. But, as a practical matter, commercial banks have faced challenges expanding access to poor and low-income households in developing economies, and nonprofits have had limited reach. We...