The growth myth in financial inclusion? (opens in new tab)

Pakistan’s financial-inclusion debate rests on a proposition invoked far more often than it is tested: expand formal credit to farmers and microenterprises, and growth will follow. It is intuitively attractive, politically safe, and developmentally convenient. It also carries the protection of moral framing; to question it is to risk sounding indifferent to the small farmer, the informal worker, or the microentrepreneur. That may explain why the proposition has survived less as an empirical c...