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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.

Are Information Disclosures Effective in the Credit Card Market? Evidence from Mexico

Alan Elizondo
Eduardo Laguna-Müggenburg
Researchers tested the effect of seven different information disclosure messages on credit card clients of a large Mexican bank and found that non-standard information disclosures reduced debt levels and lowered delinquency more effectively than legally mandated disclosures.

Informal Math Games to Improve Children's Readiness for Learning School Mathematics in India

By the time they reach primary school, disadvantaged children often lag behind their more advantaged peers in the skills and concepts of formal math. To address this issue, researchers examined the impact of math games, played in preschools and exercising early emerging, universal and intuitive...

Testing Commitment Devices for Remittances among Filipino Migrants in Rome

Giuseppe De Arcangelis
Majlinda Joxhe
David McKenzie
Erwin Tiongson
Researchers evaluated the impact of enabling Filipino migrants to label remittances for education on the amount of money they sent home. Labeling remittances as funds to be used for education raised the amount of money migrants sent home substantially (over 15 percent).

Countering Covid-19 Misinformation through WhatsApp in Zimbabwe

In this randomized evaluation in Zimbabwe, researchers studied how social media messages targeting misinformation can affect people’s beliefs about and responses toward Covid-19. The study found that these messages increased participants’ knowledge of Covid-19 information by 7 percentage points and...

The Impact of Personalized Information on Informed School Choice in Chile

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to measure the impact of an information program on parental school choice and long-term student achievement. They found that the intervention shifted household school choices of those who were not enrolled before the intervention toward establishments...

Improving Women’s Labor and Welfare Outcomes through Microfinance in Uganda

Researchers in rural Western Uganda tested whether a microfinance program can help women borrowers switch out of subsistence agriculture to other labor activities, such as entrepreneurship or small-scale trading. While microloans helped women switch into service-based jobs including small-scale...