Microcredit Under the Microscope: What Have We Learned in the Past Two Decades, and What Do We Need to Know?

Abhijit Banerjee

Annual Review of Economics, 2013, vol. 5, issue 1, 487-519

Abstract: Research on microcredit is now two decades old. There has been enormous progress in understanding both what microcredit does and how. Yet a lot of what we have learned has raised new and often quite fundamental questions about its nature: Is microcredit primarily about investment, consumption, or savings? Why is it that the investments financed by microcredit do not always lead to income growth, and does this have to do with the structure of microlending? What are the roles of social capital, reputation, and group lending? This article attempts to take stock of this significant body of work and tries to identify the most important questions for future research.

Keywords: credit markets; group lending; impact evaluations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O12 O16 O17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (142)

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