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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.

The Value of Regulatory Discretion: Estimates from Environmental Inspections in India

Researchers are evaluating the impact of making environmental inspections of high-polluting industrial plants more frequent and removing regulator discretion in selecting plants for inspection on regulatory compliance and pollution emissions in Gujarat, India.

Using GPS-enabled Cellphones to Monitor Agricultural Extension Agents in Paraguay

Researchers partnered with the Government of Paraguay to measure the impact of a new monitoring technology—GPS-enabled cell phones—on the job performance of agricultural extension agents (AEAs). Overall, cell phones improved AEAs’ performance by increasing the share of farmers visited, and...

Leveraging Local Governments to Support Rice Mechanization in India

Working with local government leaders and agricultural extension agents, the researcher is conducting a randomized evaluation to test the impact of promoting a mechanization technology. Uniquely, the researcher will closely track how employment shifts for women who formerly did the mechanized work.

Graduating Low-Income Households in Honduras

Bram Thuysbaert
To test this theory, researchers in six countries evaluated a multi-faceted approach aimed at improving long term income of low-income households. They found that the approach had long-lasting economic and self-employment impacts and that the long-run benefits, measured in terms of household...

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...

Decentralized Pricing for Public Services: Evidence from Tanzania

Florian Blum
Researchers introduced a price regulation on poultry vaccines in Tanzania to evaluate the impact of reducing service providers’ discretion over prices on the number of recipients served, prices charged, and the overall welfare of beneficiaries. The price-cap reduced the average price of vaccinations...

Using Technology to Promote Electoral Participation in South Africa

Karen Ferree
Clark Gibson
Danielle Jung
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation of the VIP:Voice, a digital election participation platform, to measure the impact of information and communications technologies on individuals’ political participation. Via the platform, researchers interacted with nearly 100,000 citizens, recruited...

Gender-specific managerial training program and firm productivity in Colombia

Researchers are evaluating the impact of providing a gender-specific managerial training program on career advancement prospects for women and workplace productivity.