This event took place on July 21. View Jonathan Morduch's Microfinance Impacts presentation slides from the event here.

Microfinance's Social Impact: Cutting Through the Hype
A number of recent randomized control trial studies have questioned long-held beliefs about the impact of microfinance on poverty.  The findings have generated controversy and some misinterpretation among practitioners and the media. The research has raised questions about what microfinance's role is or should be in strateges for economic development. Portfolios of the Poor co-author Jonathan Morduch is joined by a panel of researchers and experts to discuss what the data really means, its strengths, weaknesses and its implications for the microfinance industry as a whole.

“Social Investment: New possibilities for business and philanthropy” will be the topic of The University of Scranton’s spring Henry George Lecture by Jonathan Morduch, Ph.D., professor of public policy and economics at the New York University Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. The May 6 lecture will begin at 4 p.m. in the Pearn Auditorium of Brennan Hall. It is free of charge and open to the public.

The co-author of Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day and The Economics of Microfinance, Dr. Morduch’s current research focuses on microfinance, social investment and the economics of poverty. He also serves as managing director and lead researcher for the Financial Access Initiative, which is a consortium of development economists focused on financial inclusion.

Dr. Morduch earned a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and a doctorate in economics from Harvard University. Previously, he served as a member of the economics faculty at Harvard University and has held visiting faculty positions at Stanford University, Princeton University and the University of Tokyo. 

The annual spring Henry George program is sponsored by the Economics and Finance Department at The University of Scranton and the Xi chapter of the International Economics Honor Society. Henry George was a 19th-century American economist and social reformer with a special interest in justice issues. 

For additional information about the Henry George program, call The University of Scranton at 941-4048.

Event details
Date: May 6
Time: 4 p.m.
Location: Pearn Auditorium (Room 228) of Brennan Hall (Link to map here)
Brennan Hall
320 Madison Avenue
Scranton, PA 18

It is free of charge and open to the public.

New Challenges in Microfinance: 7th Annual Conference in Leadership & Ethics

The seventh annual conference organized by the Citi Leadership & Ethics Program and NYU Stern’s Business and Society Program Area - with generous support from the Citi Foundation - will bring together academics, practitioners, and selected students to explore market-based solutions to some of the world's most intractable social problems.  This year's Distinguished Citi Fellow in Leadership and Ethics, Mary Ellen Iskenderian, President and CEO of Women's World Banking, will keynote the 2010 conference, sharing her insights on microfinance and the role of women entrepreneurs in improving emerging economies.

The conference will take place on Friday, March 5, 2010 at NYU Stern School of Business from 9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Speakers include:
* Mary Ellen Iskenderian, President and CEO, Women's World Banking
* Nejira Nalic, Executive Director, Mi Bospo in Bosnia
* Bob Annibale, Global Director of Microfinance, Citi
* Jonathan Morduch, Professor of Public Policy and Economics, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, NYU
NOTE:  Registration to this conference will automatically include registration to a talk by Muhammad Yunus, Founder, Grameen Bank, sponsored by the NYU Reynolds Program in Social Entrepreneurship and Financial Access Initiative

Space is limited! To make your luncheon reservation and reserve your conference ticket, kindly RSVP before February 27, 2010.  Please register here.

You can view the full agenda here.

The conference is free and includes breakfast and lunch.

This conference will feature renowned development economists and CMF research partners Abhijit Banerjee (MIT), Prof. Rohini Pande and Jonathan Morduch (NYU). The conference will feature results from the much-cited CMF-JPAL study on the impact of Spandana's expansion into the slums of Hyderabad. Dr. Nachiket Mor and Ms. Bindu Ananth will also partake and we expect the discussion to be heated, to accurately reflect the implications of our work for the sector and to discuss how best to continue the debate on impact.

While microfinance has been hailed as one of the most effective tools for development and poverty alleviation, critics of microfinance argue that microfinance institutions don't serve the poorest of the poor and may actually increase poverty by burdening the poor with unpayable debt.  From a donor perspective, such institutions may be financially unstable and may not deliver as well as promised on indicators of social well-being.  SIPA's Microfinance Working Group invites you to join them for a special panel discussion on the social impacts of microfinance: Taking Stock of Microfinance: Does it Really Help the Poor.

Moderator:

Louise Schneider, Vice President of Global Social Investment at Deutsche Bank and Former Senior Director of Capital Markets at Women’s World Banking.

Panelists:

Jonathan Morduch, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at NYU, Director of Financial Access Initiative, and leading researcher in the field of microfinance and impact evaluation.

Richard Rosenberg, Senior Advisor to the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (a World Bank unit), former Deputy Director of USAID’s Center for Economic Growth.

Micol Pistelli, Director of the Social Performance Program at the Mix Market .

Free and open to the public.

Reception and light refreshments to follow

RSVP: Please click here

As the practice of microfinance has begun to mature and expand, so too have concerns over how to implement it most effectively. What are the implications when a nonprofit organization offers microfinance to an impoverished community but does not provide basic health or social services? Can a single microfinance model work on different continents? How might nonprofits, lenders and governments ensure that micro-loans lead to lasting change not just for the borrowers, but for their entire families and communities?

These are among the questions to be addressed at this panel discussion hosted by Mercy Corps' Action Center to End World Hunger in Battery Park City.

Moderated by Caitlin Weaver, Deputy Managing Director of FAI

Panelists Include: Camilla Nestor, Vice President of Microfinance, Grameen Foundation; Bill Abrams, President, Trickle Up; Beth Ellen Dunphe, Director of Development, Project Enterprise; Mary Ellen Iskenderian, President and CEO of Women's World Banking.

Wednesday, August 5, 7:00PM

Please RSVP by email to events@actioncenter.org.

Join us to learn more about domestic microfinance and the obstacles currently facing small businesses!

You will hear insights from Jonathan Morduch (FAI Managing Director), Gina Harman (ACCION USA CEO), Lisa Servon (Dean of the New School for Management & Urban Policy), and other notable experts in US microfinance.

ACCION USA is a private, nonprofit organization that provides microloans and other financial services to low and moderate-income entrepreneurs who are unable to access bank credit for their small businesses.

Event will be held at the New School; 66 West 12th St, 5th Floor, Wollman Hall, NY, NY.

Monday July 27, 2009 at 6:30pm.

Please RSVP by email or on Facebook.

Trickle Up and David Larkin cordially invite you to a conversation about Portfolios of the Poor: How the World's Poor Live on $2 a Day.  Authors Jonathan Morduch and Daryl Collins will speak at the event, which will be moderated by Trickle Up President Bill Abrams.

Cocktails and hors d'oeuvres will be offered.

Please RSVP to Katie Matlack at kmatlack@trickleup.org or call 212.255.9980 x 202.

Tuesday July 14, 2009 from 6:30pm to 9:00pm.

Trickle Up is a New York-based non-profit organization that empowers people living on less than $1 a day to take the first steps out of poverty, providing them with resources to build microenterprises for a better quality of life.

FAI Director Dean Karlan gives presentation: "Interest Rate Elasticities in Microfinance."

FAI Managing Director, Jonathan Morduch gives the keynote address at the First European Research Conference on Microfinance.  The conference aims to gather leading academic researchers and to develop suitable frameworks in a constantly changing landscape. The provisional programme of the conference can be found here.  Professor Morduch will speak on the second day of the three-day conference.

Join book authors Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, and Stuart Rutherford at the launch of their book: Portfolios of the Poor. This meeting is for Microfinance Club UK members only.  Please register for the event or become a member online at www.mfclubuk.org before 10am on Friday, May 29th, 2009. 

6:00pm-8:00pm
Citigroup Centre, Auditorium Entrance
33 Canada Square

Canary Wharf, London E14 5LB

The Center for Financial Inclusion cordially invites you to attend a talk on Portfolios of the Poor: How the World's Poor live on $2 a Day.  Authors Jonathan Morduch and Daryl Collins will speak at the event.  Please RSVP by May 20 to Charlotte Connors at cconnors@accion.org 

Wednesday, May 27
4:00 - 6:00 p.m. at the 
Center for Financial Inclusion
1401 New York Avenue, 12th Floor
Washington, DC

Wine and Cheese Reception to follow

FAI Director Dean Karlan and Jonathan Zinman presents "Payday Lending and Bank Overdrafts" at the Rand Behavioral Finance Forum.

FAI Director, Dean Karlan gives presentation: "Behavioral Incentives for Savings and Health" at the Preventing the Global Epidemic of Cardiovascular Disease: Meeting the Challenges in Developing Countries information session.

FAI Managing Director Jonathan Morduch is the keynote speaker at the University of Pittsburgh conference "Microfinance and the Law".

FAI Managing Director Jonathan Morduch presents on The Microfinance Promise: Banking the Next Billion. Morduch will also be recognized for his work and awarded a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

FAI Director Dean Karlan speaks about financial education at a conference coordinated by BANSEFI, the Inter-American Conference on Social Security (CISS), the Sparkassenstiftung fur internatiole Kooperation, UNDP Mexico and the Universidad Iberamericana (UIA).

The Boulder Institute of Microfinance in partnership with the University of Bergamo has designed a forum to bring together leading academic researchers with a group of key policy makers who guide government programs. The primary purpose of this inaugural conference is to shorten the cycle between ideas, innovations, rigorous research , and its practical applications on policies with the final goal of expanding the delivery and access of financial services to poor people. 

This year’s conference focuses on the special challenges of delivering and expanding the frontier for rural finance and is supported by the Rural Finance Program at The Ohio State University.

Plenary presentations will be delivered by Gershon Feder (World Bank), Dean Karlan (Yale), Jonathon Morduch (NYU), Jerry Skees (U. of Kentucky), and Robert Townsend (U. of Chicago). There will be additional presentations and dialogues by policymakers, academics, practitioners, and funders from around the world whose voices will represent different academic and applied viewpoints. Included among these are Juan Antonio Morales (former Finance Minister of Bolivia), Crispin Bokea (Central Bank of Kenya), Peer Stein (IFC), Thorsten Beck (World Bank), and Alexander Sarris (FAO).

The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) hold week-long courses on “Evaluation of Social Programs”. The courses focus on how to measure scientifically the effectiveness of development programs.

J-PAL is a research institute based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, committed to fighting poverty by ensuring that policy decisions are based on scientific evidence.  J-PAL works with NGOs, international organizations, government institutions, and others to evaluate programs and disseminate the results of this high quality research.

The executive education program is targeted at development practitioners, government officials, researchers and academics who want to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to scientifically test the impact of poverty programs, in developing and advanced countries.  The curriculum provides a thorough understanding of randomized evaluations.  The courses will be led by renowned faculty affiliated with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab – including MIT, Harvard and Yale – with extensive experience evaluating programs in the field.  The training program includes lectures, hands-on exercises, and group work, and is highly interactive.

The application deadline for the Cambridge and the Paris courses is March 15, 2008.  Additional information regarding the courses and application procedure is available online at: http://www.povertyactionlab.org/course/2008/

Christina Barrineau is a speaker on the panel "Responsible Policy-Makers: Ensuring Financial Sector Stability and Building Inclusive Financial Systems".

The 2008 Frankfurt Forum on Development Finance is organized this year around the topic of Responsible Finance. The conference explores to what extent there is a confluence between the two currents of responsible finance: the microfinance sector, on one side, and the commercial banks on the other.

Dean Karlan speaks at a McKinsey Alumni Development event.

The workshop is to promote interchange between outside academics and EBRD staff involved in using field experiments to evaluate EBRD projects and programs. The workshop will begin with presentations by Antionette Schoar, Dean Karlan and Esther Duflo to be followed by presentations of results from recent EBRD field experiments. There will be plenty of scope for discussion of how experimental techniques can be applied to evaluate a range of projects and programs. The organizers also hope that this workshop will serve as vehicle for promoting collaboration between outside academics and EBRD researchers. ( details...)

The paperback version of Economics of Microfinance co-authored by FAI Director Jonathan Morduch will be available on September 30, 2007