Suchergebnisse

There is a growing demand for replications of authoritative works in development studies, which reflects recent trends in other social sciences as well as challenges to important quantitative works in development studies where replications have made contested contributions to understanding. At the same time, there is a strong trend within development towards adoption of medical models of evidence-based policy to find out what policies and interventions work. Replication is a key practice of medical (and natural science) research and was advocated frequently over several decades without success. This article addresses the incentives for replication going beyond a narrow focus on extrinsic rewards, reviews some significant examples, discusses behaviour during replication and draws lessons for replicators and replicatees.

Chemin, Matthieu: Response to 'High Noon for microfinance impact evaluations'. - In: The journal of development studies. - 48 (December 2012) 12. - S. 1881-1885

SUMMARY
Financial technology, or simply 'fin-tech', is increasingly seen as one of the key tools to facilitate poverty reduction and local economic development. One article in particular by Tavneet Suri and William Jack published in the leading publication Science has played a hugely influential role in promoting the fin-tech model in the global South using the example of Kenya's iconic M-Pesa money transfer platform. The authors' central claim is that M-Pesa has been instrumental in facilitating a major episode of poverty reduction. Our analysis shows that their analysis and claims are extremely problematic.