The Credibility of Microcredit: Studies of Impact and Performance

Pullulating from a handful of isolated experiments in the 1970s to a sophisticated network of over 140 million borrowers today, microfinance is a synecdoche for global trends toward market-based solutions to social problems. But in recently years economic crises and political attacks have raised doubts about its efficacy, begetting polemic debates and sometimes baseless assertions from both supporters and detractors of microfinance. The Credibility of Microcredit offers a more objective ass...