Following weeks of protests that led prime minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and flee Bangladesh, entrepreneur and banker Muhammed Yunus has taken command of the country’s interim government. Yunus is best known for pioneering microfinance, the idea that global development can be brought about by extending small amounts of credit to the poor: a market-friendly approach, notes Kevin Donovan, that is “hardly opposed to commerce.”
This week’s reading list collects writing from our archives on development economics and its critics, including Pranab Bardhan on the limits of NGOs, Jamie Martin on the IMF and call for a new “economic internationalism,” and a forum led by Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee on an evidence-driven approach to aid.