Oct 25, 2010

What Don’t We Know about Microfinance

The first session of Day 2 took a step back to discuss what we don’t know, but should. Panel participants were Chris Dunford from Freedom from Hunger, who spoke about the limits of RCTs; Rich Rosenberg from CGAP discussed overindebtedness; and Abhijit Banerjee from JPAL offered insights into why micro-enterprises never seem to grow.

Oct 25, 2010

No WiFi = No Live Blogging, But More Microfinance Still to Come

Oct 22, 2010

My Favorite Study of the Day: Why Aren’t We Targeting Men?

Two years ago David McKenzie presented results of his work in Sri Lanka on the returns on capital for male and female entrepreneurs. He found that women had zero or negative returns on capital, while men, on average, generated fairly high returns. Since then he’s run a similar study in Ghana. I’ll be writing about this study in more detail later, including an interview with David, but for now I wanted to pass along the content of David’s last slide which covers his conclusions from the studies he’s done on this issue:

Oct 21, 2010

Microinsurance: It Works but Nobody Wants It

In summary, the various studies showed that there is tremendous potential for microinsurance—it has large benefits if the barriers to adoption are overcome. It seems that the most important area for innovation is around the cost of delivery and administration. If insurance providers can bring down those costs, they will find demand and will be able to grow a sustainable business that provides substantial benefits to clients.

Oct 21, 2010

Microfinance Impact and Innovation: Microfinance Impacts

In the second session of the morning, Dean Karlan from IPA and Yale, and Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo from JPAL presented findings from the latest round of microfinance impact studies.

Oct 21, 2010

Microfinance Impact and Innovation: Opening Session

The morning began with some introductory remarks from Jonathan Morduch, director of the Financial Access Initiative, followed by a presentation from Moody’s Jody Rasch on the investment rating company’s efforts to create a social performance rating methodology for microfinance institutions.

Aug 10, 2010

A Warning Sign of the Next Food Crisis?

While Russia’s decision isn’t necessarily a sign of another rampaging food crisis, it is just another alarm bell about the state of the world food supply and how susceptible the system is to weather and government action. Ultimately, this is another data point on the priority of improving yields around the world, fighting the brown revolution with every tool we have, and ending the unjust and evil tyranny of developed world food policy.

Jul 30, 2010

Further Thoughts on Unitus/SKS

Some conversations and reactions to my earlier post have made it clear to me that I need to clarify some points and my thoughts on Unitus and SKS.The key issue for me is not that something “wrong” was done; it’s certainly not that people are profiting by serving the poor. The key issue is how we as a society handle the cross-overs between the public interest and private interest. We debate these issues endlessly when it comes to economic stimulus, bailouts, and government contracts. It’s time for the social entrepreneurship sector to debate these issues too—and to come up with some very good answers that ensure the public maintains confidence in social enterprise as a way of solving our pressing problems.

Jul 28, 2010

Why Every Social Entrepreneur Should Be Paying Attention to SKS and Unitus

There are some very real issues for the social entrepreneurship community raised by the SKS IPO and the Unitus shutdown. Issues that social entrepreneurs have, to date, been able to ignore. No longer. We are for the first time, I believe, seeing what the endgame for social entrepreneurship can look like. The social entrepreneurship space is still the wild west—everyone is making it up as they go along. I suspect that is going to rapidly change as the details about SKS and Unitus slowly trickle out.

Jul 28, 2010

A Guide to the SKS/Unitus Story

Given that stories about the SKS IPO and the Unitus shutdown, how the two are interrelated and what it all means for the social entrepreneurship community are spread across the web, I thought it would be useful to publish a mostly comprehensive guide here. Please suggest anything that I’ve missed in the comments. I’ll add to it as I see new material.