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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.

Increasing Financial Aspirations to Improve Financial Decision-Making and Outcomes in the Philippines

David McKenzie
Aakash Mohpal
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test whether encouraging entrepreneurs to raise their aspirations helped them improve their financial decisions and outcomes. The aspirations training led individuals to set higher savings goals, but most participants failed to achieve their goals.

Teachers’ traditional beliefs about gender negatively impact the academic performance of girls in Turkey

To better understand gender inequalities in academic achievement, choice of occupation, and labor market outcomes, researchers studied the effect of teachers’ beliefs about gender roles on student achievement in Istanbul, Turkey. Girls who were taught by teachers with traditional gender views had...

Peer Effects, Diversity, and College Roommates in the United States

Johanne Boisjoly
Jacque Eccles
Researchers in the United States assessed the impact on college students of having a roommate from a different race. White students assigned to a black roommate were more likely to endorse affirmative action policies than those assigned to a white roommate. Other factors, such as having roommates...

Reducing Anemia Through Iron Fortification of Grain in Udaipur, India

Researchers in Udaipur, India, evaluated the impact of a village-level iron fortification program on the physical health of local families in 134 villages. Despite high take-up rates at the beginning of the study, overall take-up rates fell by the end of the evaluation. Results showed a significant...

Importance of Ethnic Networks in Business Transactions in India

Rajkamal Iyer
Researchers evaluated whether the ethnicities of wholesale buyers and sellers in Chennai, India, affected the transaction terms. They found that traders offered lower prices to buyers of the same ethnicity, but not necessarily because they trusted them more.

Effects of Replicating Charter Schools in Boston, Massachusetts

Researchers studied a policy reform in Boston, Massachusetts, that allowed effective charter schools to replicate their school models at new locations. Results showed that charter schools reproduced their effectiveness at new campuses by following similar sets of standardized protocols...