Measuring Changes in Client Lives through Microfinance : Contributions of Different Approaches
In the past two years, the publication of three impact evaluations of microcredit programs in India, the Philippines, and Morocco precipitated a spate of press reports questioning the value of microcredit and whether it had positive outcomes for po...
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| Language: | English |
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Washington, DC
2012
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2011/05/14596217/measuring-changes-client-lives-through-microfinance-contributions-different-approaches http://hdl.handle.net/10986/9452 |
| Summary: | In the past two years, the publication
of three impact evaluations of microcredit programs in
India, the Philippines, and Morocco precipitated a spate of
press reports questioning the value of microcredit and
whether it had positive outcomes for poor people (Karlan and
Zinman 2009 and Duflo and Banerjee 2009 and 2010). The
impact evaluations used randomized controlled trials (RCTs),
an evaluation methodology that randomly assigns an
intervention to a treatment group and withholds it from a
control group. Widely used in medical trials and
particularly in drug trials, the RCT approach is growing in
popularity among academics and evaluation specialists alike
in the social sciences. There are now more than 300 RCTs
completed or ongoing in sectors such as education, health,
governance, finance, and the private sector. |
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