November 21, 2008
Commentary
Microfinance and the Financial Crisis: Thoughts from the Church
At the end of October, I was at the Riverside Church, one of New York’s great centers of social action and charity, for a panel held as part of Columbia's annual Social Enterprise conference. The gothic setting was an odd match for the panel, but the timing was perfect for the topic: "Transitions in Capital Market Financing for Microfinance Institutions." If there was ever a time for thinking about financial transitions, this is it.
November 17, 2008
Interview
Interview: MIT Economists Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee
At a recent microfinance conference hosted by Innovations for Poverty Action, the Financial Access Initiative and Yale University, the Philanthropy Action editors sat down with Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, two of the founders of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL) at MIT and IPA Research Affiliates. Duflo, Banerjee and the other JPAL and IPA economists apply the rigor of randomized controlled trial techniques (the same approach used by the medical industry to determine if a drug or treatment does what it was designed to do) to poverty interventions to identify whether or not a program is effective. Below, they highlight the poverty interventions they view as consistently effective and provide insight into where individual donors can make a true impact.