| Abstract: |
"The Impact of Microcredit on the Poor in Bangladesh: Revisiting the
Evidence,"by David Roodman and Jonathan Morduch (2014) (henceforth RM) is the
most recent of a sequence of papers and web postings that seeks to refute the
findings of the Pitt and Khandker (1998; henceforth PK) article"The Impact of
Group-Based Credit on Poor Households in Bangladesh: Does the Gender of
Participants Matter?"that microcredit for women had significant, favorable
effects on household consumption and other outcomes. In this version of RM,
the authors have backed off many of their prior claims and methods after
earlier replies noted their faults (see Pitt (1999), Pitt (2011a), Pitt
(2011b), and Pitt and Khandker (2012)). Nonetheless, important claims against
PK remain in this new version of RM and are addressed below. Readers should
refer to Pitt and Khandker (2012) for a discussion of other issues with RM,
including a discussion of the bimodal likelihood. |