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In Bangladesh, researchers evaluated how varying husband-wife dynamics, information, and prices could affect purchases of widely available “improved” stoves, which substantially reduce indoor air pollution. They found that women have stronger preferences for improved stoves than their husbands, but...

In South Africa, researchers evaluated whether people have enough information to identify reliable borrowers among their peers and if they can help enforce loan repayment. They found that when given incentives, peers were not effective at screening for creditworthiness, but they were effective at...

Youth unemployment—an acute problem in Sub-Saharan Africa—can have long-term negative implications, both on individuals’ quality of life and on broader socio-economic development outcomes. A lack of necessary skills is often cited as contributing to high unemployment, and there is little evidence on...

In Ghana, researchers evaluated the impact of performance pay on worker productivity. They found that neither individual nor group incentives impacted productivity, work quality, or firm profitability.

Researchers evaluated whether offering individuals financial incentives to maintain their HIV-negative status could be an effective HIV prevention strategy in rural Malawi. The conditional cash transfer had no effect on HIV status or on self-reported sexual behavior. The receipt of the cash...

Researchers measured the effect of class size, teacher quality, and classroom quality on earnings and other future outcomes for children participating in the Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) project in Tennessee. The study found that smaller class sizes raised college attendance, more...