One of the central claims of the new generation of neoliberal economists that emerged in the 1960s, especially in the USA, was that market-driven private sector financial institutions were by far the most effective at intermediating capital into the most productive uses (Friedman, 1962; McKinnon,...

Cambodia’s microcredit sector – the world’s largest (in per capita terms) and most profitable – has created a raft of negative economic and social phenomena that are increasingly undermining the functioning of the economy and cohesiveness of society. Three especially damaging...

Since the end of the Kosovo war in 1999, increasing attention has been paid to the problems of economic development and reconstruction in South-East Europe. In a context of limited resources, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have a key role to play in creating jobs and building a...

The international donor community arrived in post-apartheid South Africa in the early 1990s to restructure the economy along neoliberal lines. One of the most important of the interventions it promoted was microcredit, which was widely seen as one of the principal self-help solutions to the...