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Tag: Microfinance

Published May 3, 2011

Confusing Busyness with Productivity

Last week, Jean-Marie Baland (who was my colleague while I was on research leave at the University of Namur last year, and who is himself on leave at Harvard this year) was visiting Duke. One of the two talks Jean-Marie gave was about “The Distributional Implications of Group Lending,” in which him and his coauthors show that in most cases, group lending is more beneficial to the middle class than it is to the poor.

Continue readingConfusing Busyness with Productivity
Published April 5, 2011

Excellent Podcast on Microfinance

Some of the most popular posts on this blog after the one in which I make available my handouts on linear regression and on causality and the one in which I make available my handout on how to do well in econ courses are the series of posts I wrote at the beginning of the year on microfinance.

In that spirit, I wanted to link to this excellent Guardian podcast on microfinance, which popularizes the key issues in coming up with an answer to whether microfinance help reduce poverty. The podcast features host Madeleine Bunting, academics Ha-Joon Chang and David Roodman, as well as CARE International’s Ajaz Khan and SKS Microfinance founder Vikram Akula.