Due Diligence: An Impertinent Inquiry into Microfinance

The idea that small loans can help poor families build businesses and exit poverty has blossomed into a global movement. The concept has captured the public imagination, drawn in billions of dollars, reached millions of customers, and garnered a Nobel Prize. Radical in its suggestion that the poor are creditworthy and conservative in its insistence on individual accountability, the idea has expanded beyond credit into savings, insurance, and money transfers, earning the name microfinance. But is it the boon so many think it is?

Readers of David Roodman's openbook blog will immediately recognize his thorough, straightforward, and trenchant analysis. Due Diligence, written entirely in public with input from readers, probes the truth about microfinance to guide governments, foundations, investors, and private citizens who support financial services for poor people. In particular, it explains the need to deemphasize microcredit in favor of other financial services for the poor.

• Next Generation Business Strategies for the Base of the Pyramid: New Approaches for Building Mutual Value (paperback)
• The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits
• Banker To The Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty
• Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty
• The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time
• The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
• The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good
• Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
• The Great Surge: The Ascent of the Developing World
• The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty