James Middleton

Microcredit and Poverty Alleviation: Advancing Understanding of Institutions and complementary activity.

Honors supervisor : Richard Seymour

In recent years microfinance has become a dominant force in developmental economics. It has provided an opportunity for the poor to help themselves out of poverty by financing entrepreneurial activity, rather than by relying on handouts and charity. This has led to microfinance attracting strong support and financing worldwide and its entrenched popularity as an approach to economic development and poverty alleviation. Microfinance has been acknowledged as an effective means of creating the institutions that have been identified as crucial to achieving economic development and this study analyses the role microfinance institutions (MFIs) play as active institutional entrepreneurs, thus contributing to existing theory on both institutional entrepreneurship and microfinance. To achieve this qualitative research will be undertaken, with a single case study, primarily consisting of semi-structured interviews being used to gain an in-depth understanding of the phenomena in question. This will hopefully allow the researchers to gain valuable insight into the role MFIs play in institution building and allow them to provide constructive analysis and feedback on existing practice and theory in the field.