Blog

News

Browse news articles about J-PAL and our affiliated professors, and read our press releases and monthly global and research newsletters. For media inquiries, please email us.

The Impact of Rapid Performance Feedback on Student Achievement in Nigeria

Researchers are partnering with Bridge International Academies to evaluate the impacts of interleaved problem sets, which allow for rapid performance feedback, on students’ learning outcomes in Nigeria.

Managerial Practices for Improved Productivity of Skilled Workers in the UK

Greer Gosnell
Researchers worked with an airline to test the impact of different types of information and incentives on pilots’ productivity, as measured by pilots’ implementation of fuel-saving practices. Provision of personalized targets for achieving these fuel-saving practices led pilots to implement them...

Can Mobile Phones Improve Take-up and Delivery of Maternal Cash Transfer Programs in India?

Researchers are conducting a randomized evaluation to test whether a phone-based information service can increase take-up of India’s maternity cash transfer programs, and whether phone-based feedback can improve local-level program functioning and child health. Research ongoing; Results forthcoming.

Examining Preferences for Inclusive Decision-Making in Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, researchers evaluated how temporary exposure to a community driven development program altered citizens’ preferences for inclusive, participatory approaches to decision-making. In this context, exposure to participatory decision-making increased the value that communities assigned to...

Decreasing Mobile Money Vendor Misconduct through Information Sharing in Ghana

In Ghana, researchers evaluated the impact of providing vendors and consumers with information on official mobile money charges and options for recourse for consumers to report being overcharged. The program led to a decrease in misconduct, which in turn facilitated an increase in market activity...

Housing Lottery to Increase Demand for Formal Government Housing and Improve Welfare in Ethiopia

In low- to middle-income countries around the world, nearly one billion people lived in urban informal settlements as of 2018. Rapid urbanization in most large African cities has led to both more people and a higher proportion of people living in informal settlements over time. Researchers conducted...

Vouchers for Private Schooling in Colombia

Joshua Angrist
Erik Bloom
Elizabeth King
Juan Saavedra
Colombia used lotteries to distribute vouchers which partially covered the cost of private secondary school for students who maintained satisfactory academic progress. Three years after the lotteries, winners were about 10 percentage points more likely to have finished 8th grade, primarily because...

Perceptions of Female Leaders in India

Researchers studied the impact a quota system which randomly assigned villages in India to reserve village council positions for women. They found that quotas improved voters’ perceptions of the effectiveness of women as leaders and subsequently improved women’s electoral chances.