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We replicate a flagship randomised control trial carried out in rural Morocco that showed substantial and significant impacts of microcredit on the assets, the outputs, the expenses and the profits of self-employment activities. The original results rely primarily on trimming, which is the exclusion of observation with the highest values on some variables. However, the applied trimming procedures are inconsistent between the baseline and the endline. Using identical specifications as the original paper reveals large and significant imbalances at the baseline and, at the endline, impacts on implausible outcomes, like household head gender, language or education. This calls into question the reliability of the data and the integrity of the experiment protocol. We find a series of coding, measurement and sampling errors. Correcting the identified errors lead to different results. After rectifying identified errors, we still find substantial imbalances at baseline and implausible impacts at the endline. Our re-analysis focused on the lack of internal validity of this experiment, but several of the identified issues also raise concerns about its external validity.

This article highlights an innovative approach to the management of financial resources as a commons, using the case of development community banks (DCB) in Brazil. Not only does this approach meet the criteria of durability identified by Elinor Ostrom, but also the search for egalitarian interdependent relationships. Such interdependence is linked to the complex combination of several economic principles, with the aim of allowing solidarity and democracy to prevail over market-orientation and bureaucracy. This relies on the sociopolitical roots of DCBs, in other words the ongoing, intricate, and ever-evolving process of deliberation and construction of their legitimacy, with inhabitants as well as with institutional partners.

Este artículo examina la complejidad y diversidad de las prácticas y circuitos financieros informales de las mujeres a partir de datos recabados en encuestas llevadas a cabo en Senegal y en el sur de la India. Un análisis a nivel micro revela la sutileza y la complejidad de estas prácticas y circuitos. Aparte de sus limitaciones económicas, estas prácticas expresan, reproducen, actualizan y en ocasiones modifican el rango de relaciones personales y sociales en las que estas mujeres están insertadas. Nuestro análisis revela también el peso de las normas e instituciones contemporáneas para las mujeres de los dos grupos sociales estudiados, especialmente con respecto a las alianzas matrimoniales, derechos de propiedad y acceso al mercado de trabajo. Más aún, nuestro análisis hace énfasis en el proceso continuo de interpretación, ajuste y, en ocasiones, elusión de estas normas, y es precisamente esta incesante labor de adaptación la que explica la heterogeneidad de los arreglos y las trayectorias observadas.

This paper examines the brick kiln industry in Tamil Nadu as a case study to highlight the discrepancy between normative categories of decent work and workers’ experiences and subjectivities. It highlights the extreme vulnerability of circular migrants while stressing the diversity of circulation channels and how these are both shaped by and constitutive of distinct eco-type systems and village economies. The paper also shows how employers and labour recruiters exploit many different forms of agricultural decline, and how they influence and take advantage of workers’ constraints, expectations and aspirations. It is argued that debt bondage in the brick industry is supported by the decline in agricultural labour and lack of social protection but also partly by the growing consumption needs of labourers. Paradoxically, increasing aspirations for equality and integration are helping to reproduce the conditions for capitalist exploitation and extraction of surplus value.

How have rural populations in India mobilized their social networks in times of forced “social distancing”? Focusing on a rural region in Tamil Nadu, mixing Social Network Analysis, descriptive statistics and qualitative interviews conducted before the lockdown, during the lockdown and its aftermath, this paper shows that kinship ties and caste-based relationships are still used as inescapable economic resources, especially when it comes to surviving in this unprecedented worldwide economic and social crisis. The region under study has undergone profound changes in recent decades, combining the disappearance of agrarian forms of dependency and the strengthening of intra-caste interdependence among the lower-caste group (measured here in terms of homophily and homogeneity) with a focus on access to credit and self-help to access employment. The crisis is putting these social networks to the test. Subsidized food, the main pro-poor measure of the Indian government, prevented famine, even if it did not prevent severe malnutrition. Although kin and caste solidarity played a key role in helping households survive, they did not prevent the resurgence of old forms of patronage.