We reply to the discussion and criticisms of Matthieu Chemin (MC) and Mark Pitt (MP) to our paper ((Duvendack and Palmer-Jones (DPJ)) (all this issue). MC clarifies many issues which now make replication pure probable (but not yet achieved), and MP identifies a number of problems with DPJ (some...

Microfinance (MF) and family planning (FP) are thought to be very important interventions in the promotion of human development and it has been suggested that MF has significant beneficent impacts on contraceptive adoption and fertility. Thus, several authors, e.g. Amin, Hill and Li (1995), Amin...

Recently, microfinance has come under increasing criticism raising questions of the validity of iconic studies which have justified it, such as Pitt and Khandker. Chemin applied propensity score matching to the Pitt and Khandker data, finding different impacts, but does not disaggregate by...

Many studies of development interventions are individually unable to provide convincing conclusions because of low statistical significance, small size, limited geographical purview and so forth. Systematic reviews and meta-analysis are forms of research synthesis that combine studies of...

Systematic reviews and meta-analysis have risen in popularity in international development to provide evidence on 'what works'. This paper reports the findings of a meta-analysis to assess the impact of microcredit on women's control over household spending to illustrate the challenges of...

Recently, microfinance has come under increasing criticism raising questions of the validity of iconic studies which have justified the microfinance phenomenon. This paper applies propensity score matching (PSM), which has become widely used for the analysis of observational data, to the study...

Microfinance has been on the development agenda for more than 30 years, heralded as the wondrous tool that reduces poverty and empowers women (Hulme and Mosley, 1996; Rutherford, 2001; Morduch and Haley, 2002; Khandker, 1998). Doubts, however, have recently been raised about the success of microfinance...