The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Press has released the second edition of “The Economics of Microfinance,” by Beatriz Armendriz and Jonathan Morduch. The first edition, published in 2007, provided an overview of microfinance by addressing a range of issues, including lessons from informal markets, savings and insurance, the role of women, the place of subsidies, impact measurement and management incentives. It endeavored to integrated theory with empirical data, citing studies from Asia, Africa and Latin America and introducing ideas about asymmetric information, principal-agent theory and household decision-making in the context of microfinance.
MIT Press notes that the second edition “has been updated throughout to reflect the latest data. A new chapter on commercialization describes the rapid growth in investment in microfinance institutions and the tensions inherent in the efforts to meet both social and financial objectives. The chapters on credit contracts, savings and insurance, and gender have been expanded substantially; a new section in the chapter on impact measurement describes the growing importance of randomized controlled trials; and the chapter on managing microfinance offers a new perspective on governance issues in transforming institutions.”
Beatriz Armendriz is a Lecturer in Economics in the Department of Economics at Harvard University, a Senior Lecturer on leave from University College London, and coeditor of “The Microfinance Handbook,” published by World Bank Publications in 2001.
Jonathan Morduch is Professor of Public Policy and Economics at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. He is a coauthor of “Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day,” published by Princeton University Press in 2009.
By Matthew Fox, Research Assistant
Sources and Additional Resources:
MIT Press: The Economics of Microfinance Second Edition: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12165
MicroCapital Paper Wrap-Up: Behavior Foundations of Microcredit: Experimental and Survey Evidence from Rural India, by Michael Bauer, Julie Chytilova, and Jonathan Morduch, 8 February 2010: https://www.microcapital.org/microcapital-paper-wrap-up-behavioral-foundations-of-microcredit-experimental-and-survey-evidence-from-rural-india-by-michael-bauer-julie-chytilova-and-jonathan-morduch/
MicroCapital Paper Wrap-Up: Regulation, Competition, and Financing, by Robert Cull, Asli Demirguc-Kunt and Jonathan Morduch, 8 December 2009: https://www.microcapital.org/microfinance-paper-wrap-up-microfinance-tradeoffs-regulation-competition-and-financing-by-robert-cull-asli-demirguc-kunt-jonathan-morduch/
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