Financial Landscapes Reconstructed

Book excerpt: The past few decades have seen special and changing emphasis in policy frameworks of rural financial intermediation in developing countries, varying from the distribution of cheap credit via specialized farm credit institutions, to the building of linkages between banks and savings groups, to attempts to use traders or NGOs as new conduits of lending. The destructive impact of cheap credit programs on rural financial markets has been the subject of two conferences organized by the Ohio State University in the USA in 1976 and 1981, in conjunction with the Agency for International Development and the World Bank. They resulted in a collection of readings edited by J.D. Von Pischke, Dale W Adams and Gordon Donald, Rural Financial Markets in Developing Countries (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press 1983), followed by Undermining Rural Development With Cheap Credit, edited by Dale W Adams, Douglas H. Graham and J.D. Von Pischke (Boulder: Westview Press 1984). Acknowledging the increasing interest of researchers and policymakers in the roles and uses of informal financial intermediaries, the Ohio State University subsequently organized a Seminar in Washington, D.C., in 1989 that produced Informal Finance in LowIncome Countries, edited by Dale W Adams and Delbert A. Fitchett (Boulder: Westview Press 1992).