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Journal Article
Cows, Kiva, and Prosper.Com: how disintermediation and the internet are changing microfinance
Recent advances in finance and technology are providing new opportunities for individual investors to support and invest in microenterprises, and in some cases, bypassing intermediaries altogether. While these efforts at disintermediation are still new, they present a new way for poor communities to attract capital that has the potential to unleash the entrepreneurial capacity of the poor. They might also hold the key for innovation in other related fields, such as community development finance.
Journal Article
The latest frontiers for financial inclusion: Using mobile phones to reach the unbanked
The goal of community development should be to improve the lives of as many disadvantaged people as possible with a minimum amount of resources. The field can achieve this goal by identifying those community development projects that are both efficient and have significant social impacts, and then scaling up. However, without effective evaluations, it is impossible to gauge progress. Effective evaluations include randomized experiments and well-designed observational studies, both of which can measure the impact to society. This article analyzes the best evaluation methods in international ...