The use of control groups in impact assessments for microfinance

Looks into the barriers which are encountered in the use of impact assessments to evaluate microfinance programs, more specifically the difficulties encountered in the control group, a method employed to compare a population that had benefitted from a microcredit scheme to another group which had not. While this method is increasingly being used, it is beset by a number of methodological challenges — three of which are dealt with in more detail in this paper, i.e. sample selection bias, misspecification of causal relationships and motivational problems.[author]