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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...

Researchers introduced text message reminders to evaluate their effect on Kenyan patients taking their antiretrovirals consistently and not skipping doses. Patients who received weekly text messages were more likely to take their medicine 90 percent of the time and were less likely to skip doses for...

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).

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of two different performance-based incentives on students’ test scores, motivation, and behavior in Malawi. They find that tournament-style incentives that rewarded the top performers among a large group lowered test scores and student...

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.

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...

In many countries, rural populations access social services through decentralized systems that hire community-based workers with high monitoring needs, leaving little time for supervisors to perform other essential functions. Researchers are evaluating the impact of a phone-based e-monitoring app...