David Roodman's Microfinance Open Book Blog

 

Posts in: 1. Introduction

 

Re-returning to the Introduction

March 6th, 2011

Posted by Tags:

After completing the draft last summer, I Returned to the Introduction.

But then my peer review committee told me I needed to get to the point at the start of the book. I have now incorporated the point-getting-to text and reworked the chapter once more (.docx .pdf).

I revised the early part of the chapter, which motivates the book. Before, it referred to all the exciting microfinance investment deals in 2007 and 2008 and pointed out that we know much less about the social return to microfinance investment than the financial return. Boy did that seem out of date. Now it is about all the challenges microfinance has faced in the last two years, and the growing confusion about microfinance in the public mind. I sure hope the new version doesn’t obsolesce as rapidly as the old.

I rounded off this new description of microfinance’s muddle with a bit about Vijay Mahajan’s soul searching trip across India. I think this makes a nice metaphor for and transition into my description of my own intellectual journey, and resonates with the idea a bit later that my journey is a destination too. Like his, my journey involved listening to many voices.

I also replaced the sad story in the opening, which was about a Compartamos borrower in Mexico, with one from the Tom Heinemann documentary. Now both the happy and the sad story are about Grameen borrowers in Bangladesh. I did this to avoid seeming to side with Yunus in his attacks on Compartamos (“Grameen good, Compartamos bad”) because this is not the place to get into that debate, and to emphasize that even when focusing on one lender in one country, one can run into confusingly contradictory stories.

As always, comments welcome. I’m sure it’s still bumpy in a few places, but overall I think this is one of the best things I’ve ever written.

Comment »

 

Getting to the Point

February 10th, 2011

Posted by Tags:

Last Friday, I convened a small meeting of peer reviewers of my book. Turns out getting busy experts to review a 100,000-word manuscript isn’t easy, which made invited reviewers more numerous than actual reviewers and made me all the more grateful to the latter. Beth Rhyne came in person, as did my boss Nancy Birdsall; Rich Rosenberg and Jonathan Morduch joined by Skype. (Skype’s new group video-conferencing feature worked well, by the way.) Stuart Rutherford, Greg Chen, and Deepa Narayan all sent comments by e-mail.

I think the session went really well. Happily, the reviewers did not recommend radical changes such as cutting or consolidating chapters, though one did point out that the development-as-industry-building theme comes late given its ultimate importance. The strongest message I got was exactly what I needed: get to the point. Figure out your bottom lines, state it forthrightly in the bookend chapters, and make sure the internal chapters connect to and serve those bottom lines. The technical term for this kind of advice is “kick in the pants.”

The other big message in my view was that I should emphasize the novelty of my ecumenical approach as a strength in itself, with implications for development studies more generally. To understand a major class of interventions, you need to systematically not only the evidence but the theories that link evidence to outcomes. To play off a hot trend which I think is quite valuable, randomized trials do not alone suffice to reveal the full story of the role of microfinance in development, nor provide all the relevant policy guidance. The analogy I’ve used before is with mortgages: an RCT of mortgages would not fully enlighten us about the role of the mortgage industry in the economy.

I think these two pieces of guidance go together. My compulsion to hear out all sides is a weakness and a strength. Where it is a weakness, in preventing me from taking a stand, I need to overcome it. Where it is a strength, I need to take pride in it. As you can see, this is a pretty personal process.

Pondering all this, I added the following text to chapter 1. I’m really interested in what you think:

Read More…

5 Comments »

 

Returning to the Introduction

July 1st, 2010

Posted by Tags:

I just posted a rewritten chapter 1 (.doc .pdf). Going over this text felt almost like archeology. As I reached the last paragraph, I realized I was looking at the oldest piece of text in the entire draft (two years old). When I wrote the original, I was naturally much less clear than now about my concluding messages—though I feel like I am still discovering those. I have also become more comfortable writing in the first person, thanks to this blog. So the new text is fairly personal in places. See what you think.

Having rewritten both book-end chapters, I feel that I am finally over the hump on this book. The process of writing-in-order-to-think is winding down.

Comment »

 

Chapter 1 main post: Introduction and overview

February 17th, 2009

Posted by Tags:

As I conceive it, Chapter 1 (.doc .pdf) motivates, introduces, and summarizes the book. Not surprisingly, I drafted this chapter first–back in June, in order to present the book ideas to my CGD colleagues. Since then I have written and learned much more. Once the rest of the book is drafted, I will return to this chapter and make it do a better job of distilling and communicating the conclusions. So I view the current draft as provisional.
Read More…

2 Comments »

 
 |