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Those self-employed in microenterprises, who often report low profits and own few assets, account for fifty percent of the labor force in low-income countries. Researchers are conducting a randomized evaluation to test the effect of relieving constraints to microenterprise relocation on business...

The researcher evaluated whether randomly offering parent-teacher meetings led to improvements on student learning, parental engagement, and teacher efforts in primary schools in rural Bangladesh. Overall, the program led to improved test scores, increased parental engagement in children’s learning...

Researchers, in partnership with Kimanya Ngeyo Foundation for Science and Education in Uganda, evaluated the impact of a program that trained teachers to learn like scientists: posing questions, framing hypotheses, and using real-world experience wherever possible. They explored how this approach to...

To examine these issues, researchers randomly assigned 49 villages in Indonesia to choose local infrastructure projects through either a direct election or a representative-based meeting. Choosing local infrastructure projects by direct election, rather than through representatives, had a small...

In Lusaka, Zambia, researchers compared the effect of financial and non-financial reward schemes on sales of female condoms. They found that non-financial incentives were more effective than financial rewards at motivating hair stylists to sell female condoms to their customers.

Researchers evaluated the impact of a reform to the pollution audit system in India, making auditors more independent, on the truthfulness of their reporting and the behavior of the firms they audited. Increasing their independence made them more likely to report the truth about industrial plants’...

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation with a bank in the Dominican Republic to compare the impact of two distinct programs: standard accounting training versus a simplified, rule-of-thumb training that taught basic financial heuristics.

In Malawi, researchers analyzed whether fingerprinting borrowers from a microfinance institution would have an effect on repayment rates. Using fingerprinting for loan enforcement increased repayment by 40 percent among Malawian farmers with the highest default risk.