'Evaluating' microfinance : academic irrelevance

The choice of Microfinance (MF) by the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) as the primary means of poverty alleviation should have brought clarity to the role and functioning of MF, but instead it seems to have generated a fog. It is desirable to take a fresh look and start from first principles to clear the air. Microfinance is micro finance---it is finance writ small. If finance works, microfinance works. Much of the difficulty has been created by academics and arises from scholars treating MF as though it is some new economic phenomenon. With a series of specific questions, and with the Bangladeshi case in mind,it will be argued that many of the interesting and constructive questions have not been on the research agenda. Instead, the attempt to rely on randomized controlled trials is serving to distract. Microfinance ; Grameen bank ; poverty ; randomized controlled trials