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Guest Editorial
I have been known to mock some ’academic’ research about microfinance by suggesting that one might as well study the correlation between the size of loan officers’ shoes and the veracity of their expense claims. This nonsense arises from my scepticism about much of the research on microfinance and indeed any topic which emerges from universities around the world, and on which the professional advancement of their faculty appears to depend. Hence I was very pleased when Jason Donovan and his colleagues asked me to write an editorial for this issue. Three of the four papers which have been chosen for the issue are about correlations between two or more measurable features of a sample of microfinance institutions; I shall have to abandon my thoughtless mockery and examine whether such papers really do make a useful contribution to the improvement of microfinance.
I have been known to mock some ’academic’ research about microfinance by suggesting that one might as well study the correlation between the size of loan officers’ shoes and the veracity of their expense claims. This nonsense arises from my scepticism about much of the research on microfinance and indeed any topic which emerges from universities around the world, and on which the professional advancement of their faculty appears to depend. Hence I was very pleased when Jason Donovan and his colleagues asked me to write an editorial for this issue. Three of the four papers which have been chosen for the issue are about correlations between two or more measurable features of a sample of microfinance institutions; I shall have to abandon my thoughtless mockery and examine whether such papers really do make a useful contribution to the improvement of microfinance.
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