The Political Economy of Microfinance, 1st ed. 2015 Financializing Poverty Studies in the Political Economy of Public Policy Series

According to the author, rather than alleviating poverty, microfinance financialises poverty. By indebting poor people in the Global South, it drives financial expansion and opens new lands of opportunity for the crisis-ridden global capital markets. This book raises fundamental concerns about this widely-celebrated tool for social development.

1. A Framework for Engaging Microfinance
2. A Genealogy of Microfinance
3. The Financialisation of Poverty
4. Financialising Public Goods
5. Mechanisms of a Microfinance Crisis
6. At the Crossroads of Development and Finance
7. Appendix
7.1 Calculating the Surplus Extraction
7.2 Projects Using Microfinance for Water and Sanitation

Philip Mader is a research fellow at the Institute for Development Studies, UK. He taught in Basel and studied in Sussex, Cambridge, Cologne, and Harvard. His doctoral thesis, which was written at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, won the German Thesis Award and the Max Planck Society's Otto Hahn Medal.