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.

School Libraries and Language Skills in Indian Primary Schools: A Randomized Evaluation of the Akshara Library Program

Researchers partnered with the Akshara Foundation in Bangalore, India to evaluate the impact of hiring trained librarians in primary schools on students’ academic achievement. Overall, the intervention had little effect on students' language, math, and science skills and had no impact on student...

Moving to Opportunity or Isolation? Network Effects of a Slum Relocation Program in India

Sharon Barnhardt
Researchers examined results of a housing lottery to measure the impact of relocation on slum residents. They found that offering subsidized suburban housing resulted in neither comprehensive take-up nor higher family income, suggesting that the benefits of improved housing were offset by the costs...

The Role of Information and Preferences in School Choices in Romania

Robert Ainsworth
Rajeev Dehejia
In this randomized evaluation in Romania, researchers compared the roles of preferences and information in households’ decision-making, with regard to high school selection. Results suggest that households provided with information on school quality tend to choose schools that have a greater...

Promoting Sustainable Farming Practices in Malawi

Ariel BenYishay
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of leveraging social networks to disseminate information about two technologies, pit planting and “Chinese composting,” on farmers’ adoption of these methods. Providing performance-based incentives to peer farmers had the biggest...

Gender Differences in the Workplace: Evidence from a Tanzanian Factory

In Tanzania, researchers are conducting a randomized evaluation to test the impact of factory employment and different compensation schemes on gender differences in labor market outcomes, taste for competition, and views on social and gender norms.

Promoting Agricultural Technology Adoption in Rwanda

In Rwanda, researchers worked with TechnoServe to evaluate the impact of an agronomy training program on farmers’ knowledge and use of best practices in coffee-growing. Preliminary results suggest that the trainings helped some farmers improve their coffee-growing practices, but that the practices...

The Impact of Informational Meetings on Secondary School Choice in Kenya

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of short informational meetings with students and parents on secondary school choice. They found that these meetings increased students’ and parents’ knowledge of the application process and led students to pick lower-cost and more...