News

Researchers evaluated the impact on educational outcomes of providing enhanced vision services to low-income elementary school children. Providing vision screening and free eyeglasses significantly increased achievement in two of the three districts studied, while screening without the provision of...

In Ethiopia, researchers randomly assigned mostly female jobseekers to receive an industrial job offer or an unconditional cash transfer, meant to spur self-employment. While they found positive impacts of the cash transfers on occupational choice, income, and health in the first year, these effects...

Arabic-speaking countries perform poorly on international reading assessments. Evidence from cognitive science suggests that several features of Arabic make the language particularly difficult for beginning readers. In partnership with the Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research (AQF), researchers...

Researchers evaluated how well different measures of teacher effectiveness predicted student performance in six school districts in the United States. Measures of teacher effectiveness based on student achievement in the previous year, classroom observations, and student surveys accurately...

Researchers are using a randomized evaluation in Mexico to study the incentives media stations face when choosing to provide voters with indicators of their incumbent party’s performance in office.

Researchers sent letters to polling stations announcing smartphone vote-tally audits to evaluate the impact of audits on electoral irregularities such as non-adherence to transparency regulations and falsified vote tallies. Relative to a comparison group, letters increased the number of polling...

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation with 9th graders’ parents in São Paulo to investigate whether weekly messages giving updates on a child’s attendance and effort, or messages emphasizing their importance, better motivated parents. Both types of messages led parents to ask more about...

Researchers randomly assigned employees at garment factories in Bangladesh to either continue collecting their wages in cash, receive direct deposit wage payments into a payroll account, or receive an account but continued to receive wage payments in cash. Exposure to payroll accounts led to...