Archive for the ‘Philanthropy and microfinance’ Category

Here are a few pictures taken during my visit of local branches of microfinance institutions, in the  town of Villupuram in Tamil Nadu, the Union Territory of Pondicherry (both in South India), and the villages in the surrounding rural areas. Just a small hommage to their dedication to providing essential financial services to the poorer.


Back from fieldwork in India, I feel relieved. There is hope that the sector will come out of the severe crisis in Andhra Pradesh, and the seeds have already been planted by microfinance institutions themselves. I did not visit Andhra but Tamil Nadu, a geographically close state of  India and a comparably large and mature […]


Development economics exhibits renewed interest for microfinance, particularly after the first results of impact evaluations through randomized trials (e.g. the work of A. Banerjee, E. Duflo and co-authors). Yet the final outcome does not only depend on individual microfinance institutions and the local context in which they operate, but also on the chain of inter-organisational […]


The potential trade-off between commercial expansion and social goals is emphasised in comments of the current microcredit crisis in India –not least a well-informed FT article (subscription required) a few days ago. It has in fact been a recurrent theme in microfinance since the end of the 1990s. While consensus is that microfinance should strive […]


Tomorrow at the University of Paris Dauphine, there will be a workshop on social processes inviting the use of social and organisational network analysis tools. My colleague Ana Marr and I will present part of our ongoing work on wholesale lending networks in microfinance. Slides here.


A paper I have recently co-authored with Ana Marr, my colleague at the University of Greenwich, studies the “wholesale” lending relationships with which microfinance institutions (MFIs) obtain funding from various types of organisations -be they financial companies, official development agencies, or charities. We adopt an inter-organisational network approach and focus on three different settings, among […]


At the Global Partnerships in Microfinance conference we organised at the University of Greenwich earlier this week, Princess Máxima of the Netherlands gave the inaugural speech. Her text can be found here.


My colleague Ana Marr and I gave a paper on “Global Partnerships in Microfinance: India, Peru and Tanzania” last Monday at the conference we organised at the University of Greenwich. We used a networks approach (below) to illustrate the lending relationships between microfinance institutions in these three countries, and their funders worldwide. The slides are […]


As part of an upcoming conference on “Global Partnerships in Microfinance“, to be held at the University of Greenwich on 6-7 September 2010, we have set up a session to present an ongoing project in which we use network analysis tools. We do so to understand how inter-organisational partnerships may support microfinance in its dual […]


Networks between organisations -this is the object of a conference I am co-organising on Global Partnerships in Microfinance, to be held at the University of Greenwich, London, on 6-7 September 2010. Microfinance aims to alleviate poverty -and should do so, it is widely believed today, in a sustainable fashion. To achieve this, microfinance institutions collaborate […]



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