News

Town hall meetings in Benin reduced the ability of the most popular presidential candidate in that village to garner political support using clientelist tactics, and still appear to be effective for motivating people to attend the polls.

School choice programs offer students more opportunities to attend schools with higher achievement and graduation levels. In partnership with the Chicago Public Schools, researchers examined the effects of a school choice program on several traditional student achievement outcomes. They used a...

Helping families with young children living in high-poverty housing projects to move to lower-poverty neighborhoods improves the later-life outcomes for the children and may reduce the intergenerational persistence of poverty.

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of expected earnings on candidates’ perception of a community health worker position in Uganda, and on the resulting size and composition of the applicant pool. Fewer socially motivated participants applied when advertised wages were...

Firms in low- and middle-income countries tend to hire mainly from referral networks, which may limit hiring. Online job portals can expand recruitment networks, but firms may be hesitant to hire unfamiliar candidates outside of their network. Researchers partnered with an online job portal in India...

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...

Re searchers used a randomized evaluation to measure the impact of providing mobile calling credits to low-income adults on well-being outcomes in Ghana. Overall, the mobile credit intervention increased the ability for individuals to meet unexpected communication needs, particularly when delivered...