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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.

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.

Mitigating the Economic and Mental Health Impacts of Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected health systems and economies across the world. Low-income communities have experienced particularly detrimental impacts, as a lack of financial stability further exacerbated augment the crisis. In partnership with the mental health care center SCARF, researchers...

Impact of Job Uncertainty and Work Experience on Job Seeker Performance, Employment, and Earnings in Malawi

In Lilongwe, Malawi, researchers provided applicants for a health interviewer job with a random chance of receiving a back-up job, regardless of their success in being hired as a health interviewer, to measure (a) the impact of uncertainty on job search performance and (b) the returns to work...

Nurturing Curiosity to Enhance Learning in Turkey

Ipek Mumcu
In Turkey, researchers evaluated the impact of a new pedagogical approach aimed at cultivating primary school students’ curiosity, particularly in science, to improve learning outcomes. Students whose teachers adopted the approach displayed greater curiosity, ability to retain knowledge, and science...

Incentivizing Households to Save Energy in Hanoi, Vietnam

Jorge Lemus
Guillermo Marshall
Chi Ta
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation during the summer months of 2023 to test the impact of using contracts or contests to encourage energy savings and assess their cost-effectiveness. Researchers found that contests and contracts achieved similar levels of energy savings. However, contests...

Flipcharts, School Inputs, and Retrospective versus Prospective Analyses in Kenya

Sylvie Moulin
Eric Zitzewitz
Researchers provided educational flipcharts to 89 randomly selected Kenyan primary schools and evaluated their impact on student learning, comparing retrospective and prospective estimates. In the prospective study, the estimated impact of flipcharts on student test scores was found to be close to...

Influencing the Provision of Social Services through Mandated Female Representation in Policymaking in India

Researchers studied the policy consequences of mandated representation of female policymakers by determining whether there was any difference in the provision of social services between male- and female-led village councils. Results suggest that reservations for female leaders affected policy...