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Browse news articles about J-PAL and our affiliated professors, and read our press releases and monthly global and research newsletters. For media inquiries, please email us.

Union Leaders and Factory Workers’ Collective Action in Myanmar

Labor movements can improve workers’ lives but face great difficulty in getting workers to agree on common goals and take collective actions. In garment factory workers’ group discussions on minimum wage policies in Myanmar, researchers randomly included union leaders to study whether the presence...

The Impact of PROGRESA on Health in Mexico

Simone Peart Boyce
Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs are designed to incentivize parents to invest in their children's health and wellbeing, while providing cash transfers to improve their current welfare. Researchers evaluated the impact of Mexico’s national CCT program (“PROGRESA”) on a wide range of health...

Social Integration Effects of Pre-Migration Information Sessions in the Philippines

Victoria S. Licuanan
Andreas Steinmayr
Erwin Tiongson
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to investigate whether an expanded and more thorough version of an orientation program in the Philippines improved socioeconomic outcomes and facilitated settlement for migrants upon moving to the United States. The research team found that though the...

Formal Rainfall Insurance for the Informally Insured in India

Mark Rosenzweig
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test how informal insurance within Indian sub-castes affected the demand for formal rainfall insurance, and subsequent risk-taking among households employed in agriculture. Informal insurance both increased and decreased the demand for formal rainfall...

The Impact of Informational Meetings on Secondary School Choice in Kenya

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of short informational meetings with students and parents on secondary school choice. They found that these meetings increased students’ and parents’ knowledge of the application process and led students to pick lower-cost and more...

Local Leadership and the Voluntary Provision of Public Goods in Bolivia

María P. Recalde
Researchers used a randomized evaluation to test how local leaders influence the voluntary provision of public goods. They solicited contributions for environmental education books, which all members of the community would be able to access, and varied whether leaders made public contributions. They...

The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment in the United States

Heidi Allen
Mira Bernstein
Jonathan Gruber
Joseph P. Newhouse
Eric Schneider
Jae Song
Bill Wright
Alan Zaslavsky
In a series of evaluations, researchers took advantage of a lottery that gave low-income uninsured adults the chance to apply for Medicaid in the United States to examine the impact of health insurance on these outcomes over the first two years.