The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Anchored by a network of more than 1,000 researchers at universities around the world, J-PAL conducts randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty.
The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Anchored by a network of more than 1,000 researchers at universities around the world, J-PAL conducts randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty.
Our affiliated professors are based at over 120 universities and conduct randomized evaluations around the world to design, evaluate, and improve programs and policies aimed at reducing poverty. They set their own research agendas, raise funds to support their evaluations, and work with J-PAL staff on research, policy outreach, and training.
Our research, policy, and training work is fundamentally better when it is informed by a broad range of perspectives.
Policy reports suggest that agent network size, distribution, sustainability, service reliability, quality and demographics are important determinants of their performance. However, the available causal evidence on what interventions could be used to increase agent’s performance is still scarce. With the current pilot project, the research team will continue a long-standing collaboration with one of Indonesia’s biggest state-owned banks, managing more than 50 thousand agents across Indonesia, to examine the bank agents’ profile and understand the challenges faced by bank agents on-the-ground. This project will launch an exploratory online and phone survey with a sample of branchless banking agents, which will help to gather insights to design a randomized evaluation that will ultimately support the bank’s agent network expansion and branchless banking product’s take-up, in particular this preliminary study will help to gather insights and to design a randomized evaluation that will ultimately support the bank’s agent network expansion and branchless banking product’s take-up.