Summary and outline

Here are a short pitch and a working outline for my book. I will hotlink this entry to chapter drafts as I post them. You can also find drafts via the "Contents" list on the right margin of the blog home page.Microfinance is a remarkable phenomenon in the world of economic development. It blends the visual appeal of smiling women with the market-oriented ethos of entrepreneurship. At once radical in its suggestion that the poor are creditworthy and conservative in its insistence on individual accountability, microcredit has attracted billions of dollars from governments, private donors, and, increasingly, the capital markets. Its success in delivering savings, lending, and other financial services to millions of poor people has generated interest and excitement among donors large and small. But critics say the excitement is so much hype, that small loans rarely transform lives, and that debt is dangerous. And the microfinance movement is split by dissent. After the Mexican company Compartamos pulled in hundreds of millions of dollars going public in 2007, Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh decried their practice of charging the poor nearly 100% interest per annum as moneylending, not microfinance.The book will probe many dimensions of microfinance, in order to find a firm foundation to judge its successes and failures and guide governments, foundations, investors, and private citizens contemplating whether and how to support financial services for poor people. While avoiding jargon, it will explore the history, impacts, ethics, and politics of microfinance.Chapter drafts are posted in Microsoft Word (.docx) and Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) formats.Chapter 1. Introduction and overview (.docx .pdf)Chapter 2. How the Other Half Finances (.docx .pdf)What rich and poor people use financial services for; how the poor manage money; how the financial system supports overall economic development.Chapter 3. Credit History (.docx .pdf)Deep history of financial services for the masses, from credit groups in ancient Athens to cooperatives in Germany in the 19th century to the small loan business in America of the 1920s.Chapter 4. Background Check (.docx .pdf)Stories of Yunus and other innovators who made microfinance what it is today; survey of current microfinance landscape by the numbers.Chapter 5. Microfinance as Business (.docx .pdf)How the need to break even, combined with an evolutionary perspective, explains much about the way microfinance is done today.Chapter 6. Development as Poverty Reduction (.docx and .pdf)An informed, critical look at the literature on the impact of microcredit.Chapter 7. Development as Freedom (.docx and .pdf)A look at microfinance through Amartya Sen's notion of development as freedom. How much does it give the poor new options vs. entrapping them in debt? How do we think about the ancient yet live question of "usury"?Chapter 8. Development as Industry Building (.docx and .pdf)A look at microfinance growth as a force for enriching the institutional fabric of society.Chapter 9. The Effects of CausesA look at the selling of microfinance and what it says about how we aid development.Chapter 9. Implications (.docx and .pdf)Implications for how microfinance is supported. Implications of the success of microfinance for other domains.References (.docx and .pdf)