Following the devastating earthquake in January, CGD experts offered fresh ideas on how the U.S. and the international community could help Haiti rebuild, particularly through non-aid channels. Several recent developments in the U.S. legislative branch reflect or build upon these ideas:
Trade
You might know that I am writing a book about microfinance in public, via blogus. I'm working on the last chapter now, and that has me in a reflective mood. Here, I'd like to share one big idea that I discovered by writing the book. I am fired up about it, and I'd appreciate feedback on whether it is dumb, old, useless, or all three.
Here's how I explained it last December:
Kudos to AFD, the Gates Foundation, and the World Bank for organizing an outstanding Marketplace on Innovative Financial Solutions for Development last week in Paris. The organizers managed to bring together a lot of people with good ideas, and created an energized atmosphere worthy of the ‘marketplace’ idea.
Here is a round-up of the five winners of the contest, and some other ideas that stuck out:
Large-scale finance
This is a joint post with Michael Clemens.
The headline in the Boston Globe on September 20, 2009 was catchy: "Billions of dollars and a Nobel Prize later, it looks like 'microlending' doesn’t actually do much to fight poverty." The article referred to the findings of two recent impact evaluations in microfinance in India and the Philippines conducted by researchers at MIT and Yale, respectively. The studies, which were randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of microfinance interventions, found “weak and in some cases nonexistent effects” of microfinance on profits, expenditures and well-being. Privately and publicly, donors, MFIs and practitioners are expressing concern about the impact of these studies on the future of microfinance. Are they right to be worried?
Recent developments have brought to the front the importance and relevance of the Center’s extensive work on improving access to financial services in developing countries, where a very large proportion of households and firms lack such access. First, in the Pittsburgh Summit Communiqué, the G-20 pledged to:
Our friend and colleague Charles Kenny has taken a leap into the world of Open Book Blogging, with his excellent early draft of The Success of Development. Like my CGD colleague David Roodman, who is writing a book on microfinance through a similar format, this is a brave venture to put draft work up for all to see—and criticize. But then that’s precisely the point.
Over on my microfinance "open book" blog, I posted a digest of what is arguably the first gold standard evaluation of a storied anti-poverty intervention, microcredit. Given the paper's historic nature and its resonance with CGD themes of impact evaluation and finance, the post may particularly interest those who follow the present blog, Voices from the Center.
If you want to understand how poor people in poor countries manage money, invest in Portfolios of the Poor. The new book's four authors---Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford, and Orlanda Ruthven---took up an idea of David Hulme, to compile financial diaries of poor households.
My colleague David Roodman has decided to write his next book in public, not only by posting draft chapters as he completes them and inviting comments but also by sharing his discoveries and tribulations as he conducts the research that underpins the book. David writes:
Back in December 2006 I blogged a meeting in Paris at which the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), a sort of microfinance think tank operating out of the World Bank, won a mandate to hold a mirror up to the aid agencies that fund it. A year and a half later, CGAP's new SmartAid Index looks at the quality of donors' work in supporting micorofinance.