Re: PKT: Thoughts on Microcredit?

[Colin Danby <danby@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Eric:

If you search the PKT archives with appropriate terms you'll find some
past microcredit discussion, though perhaps not along the lines you suggest.

I'd argue that there are severe limits on how far one can theorize
microcredit in the abstract, without reference to specific places and
times.  There are certainly a large number of factors that might limit
"effectiveness*," though I would not always assume high liquidity
preference among poor people.  A more general PK point is that
enterprise, macro or micro, typically occurs within systems of
commercial and other credit, so that you have to think about how a given
microcredit intervention affects that larger system of dated payments in
which people and firms are enmeshed.

Best, Colin

*Exactly what effectiveness means can be strangely elusive in the
microcredit-advocacy literature.