Blog

In this guest post, Massey Whorley, Director of Innovation and Strategic Initiatives at the Virginia Department of Social Services (VDSS), shares insights from attending J-PAL’s Evaluating Social Programs Course and how it informed efforts to design and implement randomized evaluations of VDSS...

The J-PAL Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Initiative, housed within the American University in Cairo (AUC) School of Business, hosted a seminar on “Strengthening the Egyptian Education System to Better Reach Marginalized Children and Youth: What We Can Learn from Randomized Evaluations” at AUC...

Our co-founders Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, with longtime J-PAL affiliate Michael Kremer, were awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences on December 10, 2019. In the week leading up to the award ceremony, the laureates delivered lectures on their award-winning research and...

When a study is not published in an academic journal, how can we ensure its results, even null results, are still reported—instead of remaining inaccessible in a (metaphorical) file drawer?

Creating good policies is a complex and dynamic process. A program can be evaluated, found to improve people’s lives, and be scaled up. However, in the longer run, these programs interact with other policies, contexts change, and policymakers are in constant need of new information and evidence to...

We are pleased to announce the publication of two new methods guides to de-identifying and publishing research data. These guides draw on J-PAL’s experience of publishing research data on randomized evaluations in the social sciences for more than a decade. They provide practical advice for students...

2019 was a banner year for J-PAL on many fronts. We launched many exciting initiatives to expand the frontiers of research and evidence-informed policy, including in digital finance (Africa), government innovation (global), migrants and social inclusion (Europe), work of the future (North America)...

In 2019 we launched new initiatives to spur innovative research, admitted the first-ever cohort of blended Masters’ students, celebrated our founders’ and affiliate’s Nobel Prize win, and much more. It’s almost impossible to capture the breadth and depth of what our staff, affiliates, and partners...