Evaluations

In Uganda, researchers studied the demand for rainwater storage devices, the effectiveness of various marketing strategies in promoting them, and their impact on indicators such as school attendance and women’s participation in the labor market.

Researchers examined the level of racial discrimination in the United States labor market by randomly assigning identical résumés black-sounding or white-sounding names and observing the impact on requests for interviews from employers. Results found that résumés with white-sounding names received...

In “the text message capital of the world,” the Philippines, researchers tested the effect of text message reminders on client repayment rates. In contrast with previous research, they found that text message reminders did not increase repayment on average. Yet for repeat borrowers, who had known...

Researchers partnered with banks in three countries to see if removing the costs to opening basic bank accounts would lead to more households opening and using bank accounts. Overall, use of the accounts was low across all three countries, and being offered a free, basic bank account had no impact...

Researchers evaluated the impact of Boston’s Summer Youth Employment Program, which uses a lottery to provide youth with part-time work and skills training during the summer, on students’ educational outcomes. The program significantly increased high school graduation rates among participating...