Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/98806 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
ÖFSE Working Paper No. 39
Publisher: 
Austrian Foundation for Development Research (ÖFSE), Vienna
Abstract: 
This article argues that the microfinance model that arrived in Latin America in the 1970s has proven, as elsewhere around the world, to be an almost wholly destructive economic and social policy intervention. Centrally, I argue that the microfinance model is responsible for embedding and giving continued impetus to an adverse 'anti-development' trajectory in Latin America's economies, one that has progressively helped to de-industrialise, infantilise and informalise the overall local economic and social structure. Until recently, the extent and precise nature of this 'anti-development' trajectory has been ignored for fear of undermining and delegitimizing the global microfinance model and, with it, the dominant political-economic philosophy - neoliberalism - that essentially gave life to it. Effective local industrial policies and 'pro-development' local financial institutions are now urgently required in Latin America to build genuinely sustainable and equitable solidarity-driven local economies from the bottom up.
Subjects: 
microcredit
microfinance
neoliberalism
productivity
deindustrialisation
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
382.63 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.