History of Microfinance Impact Research by the Numbers

I gave a book talk last night at an event sponsored by CGAP and the Club de Microfinance de Paris. There were two excellent commentators (and no unexcellent ones): Florent Bédécarrats, who is finishing his Ph.D., and Jérémy Hajdenberg of I&P Conseil, which invests in microfinance. A central point of discussion was how to limit the harm from overly ample outside capital while protecting the constructive role that outsiders can play in building businesses and strengthening governance. I think we all recognized both horns of this dilemma, and that finding a middle course would not be easy. Jérémy quoted a line from my last chapter, where I say that if it can't be done right, it is better to err on the side of doing less---better for the outside investors to leave the scene than to keep inflating bubbles. We talked some about my idea for a credit bureau for investment in microfinance. Separately, Florent just sent me a paper summary with some interesting graphs of data he collected on microfinance impact studies over the last 30 years. All graphs show number of papers with bars (left axis) and number of citations with diamonds (right axis).There have been more negative studies than I realized. But still, as I have explained in blog and book, I distrust most of the (non-randomized) quantitative studies before 2009.