Prior to commencing my PhD I completed a B.A. Economics (with 1^st class) and an M.Sc. International Business Economics (with distinction) at universities in Germany and the UK. I have six years of professional experience as a financial analyst. I worked for major financial institutions and a leading automobile manufacturer in Germany and Japan. 
 

Grants awarded

2010 – 2011, DFID for a systematic review on microfinance impact evaluations with James G. Copestake, Richard Palmer-Jones, Nitya Rao, Yoon Loke and Lee Hooper

2010, 3ie – International Initiative for Impact Evaluation - for preparing a research proposal investigating selection processes in microfinance in India with Richard Palmer-Jones 
 

Publications

Other publications:

Duvendack, M. & Palmer-Jones, R., 2010. High Noon for Microfinance Impact Evaluations: Re-investigating the Evidence from Bangladesh. Working Paper 27, DEV Working Paper Series, The School of International Development, University of East Anglia, UK.
Link to document

Duvendack, M., 2010. Smoke and Mirrors: Evidence of Microfinance Impact from an Evaluation of SEWA Bank in India. Working Paper 24, DEV Working Paper Series, The School of International Development, University of East Anglia, UK. Forthcoming in T. Nair (ed.) Development Promise of Indian Microfinance. London: Routledge.
Link to document

Duvendack, M., 2004. New Sunrise for Japan? Global Banking, Vol. 17, pp.25-29.

Book reviews:

Review of “Microfinance in India” edited by K.G. Karmakar (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2008). Journal of South Asian Development 2009, Vol. 4, No.2, pp. 317-320.

Review of "Indian Microfinance: The Challenges of Rapid Growth" by P.

Ghate (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2007). Journal of South Asian Development 2008, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 297–336 
 

Presentations and conference attendance

Invited presentation “Smoke and Mirrors? Microfinance Impact Evaluations: Thoughts from a Study in India” at the Gujarat Institute of Development Research (Ahmedabad, India), the Institute for Social and Economic Change (Bangalore, India) and the Amrita School of Business (Bangalore, India), July – September 2009.

First European Research Conference on Microfinance. Brussels: 2-4 June 2009. Center for European Research in Microfinance (CERMi).

Asia-Pacific Regional Microcredit Summit 2008. Bali: 28-31 July 2008. Microcredit Summit Campaign and Gema PKM.

My thesis is entitled: “Smoke and Mirrors: Evidence from Microfinance Impact Evaluations in India and Bangladesh". My research was funded by the University of East Anglia. 

Thesis abstract

Assessing the impact of development interventions is a challenging task and the question whether and how impacts can reliably assessed remains. Rigorous impact studies are rare and most are unable to control for selection bias due to unobserved characteristics, thus adversely affecting the reliability of impact evaluations. This thesis is framed by the current methodological debate raging in the impact evaluation arena between so-called ‘randomistas’ who support the use of randomised control trials (RCTs), and their critics who emphasise the continuing value of observational data analysed with advanced econometric methods. It examines the value of observational studies using the evidence of two prominent microfinance impact evaluations conducted in India and Bangladesh.

Microfinance has been on the development agenda for more than 30 years heralded as the wondrous tool that reduces poverty and empowers women. The view that microfinance is a success was supported by a range of impact evaluation studies. However, when scrutinised closely, the evidence those evaluations provided was rather mixed. In fact, doubts have recently been raised about microfinance.

Given this context, the thesis first re-examines the microfinance impact evaluation of SEWA Bank conducted by USAID in India in 1998 and 2000. Existing panel data and newly collected cross-section data are subjected to propensity score matching (PSM), instrumental variables (IV), and panel data techniques to eliminate selection bias. This analysis is supported by direct observation and suggests that selection processes driven by unobservables play significant roles in determining who becomes a participant in microfinance, and cannot be fully controlled for by the econometric techniques employed. I draw conclusions as to what these findings imply for the reliability of the original impact estimates provided by USAID.

Second, the evidence of the most authoritative microfinance impact evaluation, conducted by Pitt and Khandker (1998) on paradigmatic microfinance interventions in Bangladesh, is revisited. A number of studies have attempted to replicate the findings of the original Pit and Khandker study but find limited or no evidence for impact. After carefully reconstructing the dataset I find a number of inconsistencies, and draw attention to variables overlooked in the data including borrowings from non-microcredit sources. The application of PSM, IV, and differences-in-differences (DiD) results in the conclusion that these data and methods do not support the main claims based of this study, namely that microcredit has significant poverty reduction outcomes, and is more beneficial when targeted on women than on men.

The application of advanced econometric techniques to observational data was unable in these cases to provide convincing evidence of impact. 

This thesis was supervised by Dr Richard Palmer-Jones and Arjan Verschoor.

Teaching Experience

Undergraduate courses: “Economics for Development 1”, “Sub-Saharan Africa Development”, “Microeconomics for Development”

Postgraduate courses: STATA computer-lab sessions for “Econometric Methods for Development”, SPSS computer-lab sessions for “Research Techniques and Analysis”