Independent research for global prosperity
Rupert Scofield has replied to my retort to his review, etc. Clearly neither of us has swayed the other much, but I appreciate the friendliness and honesty, not to mention vividness, of his latest post.
He has conceded to me the argument over what the economic studies say. So his main thesis now is:
If you follow microfinance blogs, you probably know that the World Bank has released a big database called Global Findex. With muscular funding from the Gates Foundation, the World Bank ran an ambitious polling project to learn about what financial services people use and how they use them---or why they don't. Some 150,000 people were interviewed in 148 countries. And that's just the first round: the surveys will be repeated, the grant lasting 10 years.
Rupert Scofield, the co-founder, president, and CEO of FINCA, just reviewed my blog-linked book on his book-linked blog. He doesn't find my analysis very persuasive. Inevitably, the reaction is mutual.
Two years ago, I blogged weightily about the Grameen Bank's deteriorating loan portfolio. In the second half of 2009, its repayment rate---fraction of amounts due actually paid---fell from 97.81% to 96.55%.That was hardly catastrophic in itself, but marked the sharpest drop for that indicator in its publicly recorded history.
I contributed a post to CGAP's blog yesterday that summarizes the evidence to date from the randomized trials of microcredit and microsavings. Just in the last six months, enough new studies have appeared from diverse locales that we can begin to generalize. It's an important moment.
So if you're a regular follower of this blog, I encourage you to read the post. It contains things I haven't written here. The core is a couple of tables distilling the results.
Dina Pomeranz of the Harvard Business School will come to CGD next Wednesday (April 18) for a brownbag lunch presentation of the latest randomized study of the impact of microsavings. The preliminary results are encouraging: savings accounts do indeed appear to help people "smooth consumption," i.e., manage the financial vicissitudes of life.
