David Roodman's Microfinance Open Book Blog

 

Posts in: 4. Background Check

 

Reworked Chapter 4

February 27th, 2011

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Chapter 4, “Background Check” (.docx .pdf), is a bit of a beast. It doesn’t have an analytical drive. It tells “thumbnail histories” of the different forms of microfinance in operation today, reviews some cross-cutting themes such as the historically novel focus on women, then closes with a brief statistical survey of the microfinance landscape. Because it summarizes a huge amount of terrain, it has been hard to get right. In the last month or so, I have been trying to work the knots out, especially after I got comments from the peer reviewers.

Among the changes:

  • Added a summary text box at the top.
  • Developed a direct definition of microfinance: methods of financial service provision that are suited to formal, business-like, non-governmental institutions serving the poor on a large scale.
  • Clarified differences between Accion-style solidarity lending and classic Grameen-style group credit, which is generally called solidarity lending too
  • Rewrote the history of self-help groups in India to explain the role of Aloysius Fernandez and MYRADA.
  • Rewrote the Indonesia history to deemphasize the role of Bank Dagang Bali and describe the Badan Kredit Kecematan (BKK) banks in Central Java.
  • Clarified the purpose of the “cross-currents” section as describing, rather than analyzing, various debates and dimensions of diversity within microfinance.
  • Reworked the subsection on gender to incorporate BRAC’s early role in focusing on women and to take a more balanced view on the relative importance of feminist ideas and the susceptibility of women to peer pressure in driving the focus on women
  • Lots of finer editing.

Comments still welcome. On to the next. I think and hope most of the remaining chapters will require less reworking.

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Chapter 4!

May 20th, 2009

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I am happy to get this monkey off my back! I have just uploaded a draft of chapter 4 in Word (doc) format and pdf. Update: New version, incorporating sbg’s comments: Word (doc) format and pdf.

This chapter is my attempt to survey the landscape of modern microfinance. It operates in two modes. Most of it, like chapter 3, tells history and individual stores, as a way of introducing the various types of microfinance. Solidarity group lending, for example, is introduced by telling Muhammad Yunus’s story, as well as that of Jeffrey Ashe of Accion. You’ll see the fruits of my learning about microinsurance, too. (HT to all commenters on that post.)

At the end, the chapter shifts to a statistical survey of microfinance today. These numbers are not done yet. An intern starting this week, Eben Lazarus, is helping me, and we should post an update soon.
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