The April issue of the Journal of Development Studies includes the final version of my article with Jonathan Morduch replicating the study of the impact of microcredit in Bangladesh by Mark Pitt and Shahidur Khandker. Properly, the journal also carries a reply from Mark Pitt. (Ungated versions of the dueling documents are here and here.) To my surprise, JDS did not solicit a rejoinder from us the way they did in a nearly identical situation involving a JDS editor as replicating author. Perhaps this is a sign of the strength the editors see in our paper…which is to say, maybe I should have just chilled.
But as usual, Pitt’s arguments are strongly worded even as their subject remains technical. So the average reader will absorb the style more than the substance, and wonder, I fear, who are these fools Roodman and Morduch? So for the public record, here is a rejoinder from yours truly. It’s a quote-and-response.
“RM [Roodman & Morduch] have backed off many of their prior claims and methods.”
No. The first version of our paper questions the exogeneity of the core intent-to-treat variables; highlights that an asserted discontinuity in treatment, central to Pitt & Khandker’s (PK’s) claim to quasi-experimental status, is absent from the data; observes that the magnitude of the impact estimates depends on an arbitrary censoring choice for the “log of 0”; and demonstrates that a more-robust linear estimator produces no evidence of impact. Those arguments stand.
Continue reading “Rejoinder to Pitt”