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.

Energy Conservation through Text Messages and Price Increases in Japan

Takanori Ida
Makoto Tanaka
Researchers introduced two programs during peak consumption hours—text messages encouraging energy conservation for the benefit of society, or price increases—to evaluate the impact of social motivation and dynamic pricing on energy conservation. Both programs led to reductions in electricity use...

Role of Information on the Returns of Post-Primary Education on School Dropout

Researchers and the Ministry of Education evalauted at scale two low-cost ways of providing relevant information to help students and their families make more informed decisions. Results suggest that the programs were effective at changing educational plans and lowering dropout rates, while...

The Effect of Mentoring on School Attendance and Academic Outcomes in Chicago Public Schools

Sandra Christenson
Amy Claessens
Ashley Cureton
Mimi Engel
Ijun Lai
Mary Clair Turner
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation of Check & Connect (C&C), a school-based mentoring program, to evaluate its impact on school attendance and academic outcomes. For students who began the program in grades 5-7, the program decreased student absences and caused participating students to...

Reducing Prejudice Through Cross-Caste Cricket Teams in India

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation of cricket teams in rural India to identify whether team composition could improve intergroup harmony. Collaborative contact between cricket players of different castes reduced prejudice toward members of lower castes and increased cross-caste...

Gender Violence and School Achievement in Mozambique

Sofia Amaral
Aixa Garcia-Ramos
Sarita Ore-Quispe
In Mozambique, researchers are evaluating the GBV and schooling impacts of implementing a GBV curriculum targeted at students.

A Mass Media Intervention to Reduce Violence Against Women in Rural Uganda

Jasper Cooper
In rural Uganda, researchers evaluated whether videos encouraging communities to speak out against violence against women (VAW) could change behavior, attitudes, and norms. Women exposed to the videos were more willing to report VAW to authorities. More broadly, women in villages where the videos...

The Impact of Providing Land Tax Subsidies, Local Monitoring, and Minikits on Irrigation Use in Rwanda

Maria Jones
Florence Kondylis
John Loeser
Building off of previous quasi-experimental research, researchers conducted three randomized evaluations to test the impact of providing farmers with land tax subsidies, different ways of monitoring water access and the canal’s operations and maintenance, or farming minikits on farmers' use of...