Blog

News

News, ideas, and analysis from J-PAL staff and affiliated professors. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive monthly email updates.

A dad works on his laptop on the couch while children climb all over him.

Working remotely or remotely working? Best practices in working from home post COVID-19

Research from randomized evaluations can shed light on some of the benefits of working from home for employees and their employers—and best practices for those of us looking to maximize our productivity while preserving some work-life balance.
A poster in Indonesia with health recommendations

Cushioning the poor from the COVID-19 shock

In an op-ed for Project Syndicate, Rema Hanna and Ben Olken explain that expanding social protection to reach the most vulnerable people must be a pillar of every country’s COVID-19 strategy.

How can the Nobel-winning “experimental approach to alleviating global poverty” contribute to research on job creation?

Job creation is an all-time favorite talking point for politicians around the world as economies adapt to new trade patterns and technological innovation causes tectonic shifts in older industries. But how do we actually create more jobs?

Egyptian rug firms weave their way into foreign markets

By
From 2011 to 2014, J-PAL affiliates David Atkin and Adam Osman, with co-author Amit K. Khandelwal, evaluated small rug producers in Egypt to understand how exporting affects firms’ profits and productivity.

Can we support SME growth by increasing demand for their products?

While there are many theories of the sources of the differences in size and wealth of economies between countries, economists have long argued that productivity gaps between firms in the private sector are a major contributor.

Introducing J-PAL's Firms sector

What role do policies that affect private sector firms play in closing the productivity gap between higher-income and lower-income countries, and what are the implications of firms’ policies on economic growth and worker welfare?