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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 Cognitive Stimulation and Nutritional Supplements on Early Childhood Development in Colombia

Camila Fernandez
Emla Fitzsimons
Sally Grantham-McGregor
Marta Rubio-Codina
Early childhood is an important time for both physical and neurological growth and development, but many children fail to reach their development potential. Researchers introduced an early childhood development program in Colombia to test the effects of psychosocial stimulation and micronutrient...

The Role of Conditional Cash Transfers in Mitigating Income Shocks in Mexico

In rural Mexico, researchers examined whether conditional cash transfers (CCTs) protect families against income shocks and promote investment in children's education.

The Impacts of Mental Health Treatment on Work and Productivity in India

Researchers evaluated the impact of providing depression treatment and economic assistance on mental health and economic behavior in peri-urban communities near Bangalore, India. Treatment reduced depression severity, a benefit that persisted when paired with light-touch livelihoods assistance, but...

Assessing the Effectiveness of Alternative Text Messages to Improve Collection of Delinquent Fines in the United Kingdom

Rory Gallagher
Laura Haynes
Peter John
David Torgerson
The collection of delinquent fines is a massive public administrative challenge. In the United Kingdom for instance, unpaid court fines amounted to more than £600 million in 2011. Managing noncompliant accounts and dispatching bailiffs to collect fines in person is costly. Researchers used a...

Student Plagiarism and Rational Ignorance in the United States

Thomas S. Dee
By subjecting the papers to an electronic anti-plagiarism program, researchers found that the tutorial significantly reduced the likelihood of plagiarism, particularly among students with lower college entrance scores who had the highest rates of plagiarism. A follow-up survey suggests that the...

Increasing Mobile Banking Use Among Rural Populations in Ghana

Researchers assessed the impact of financial incentives and peer endorsement on mobile banking adoption and formal savings in Ghana. While financial incentives boosted adoption by 50 percent, peer endorsement was twice as effective, leading to sustained mobile banking use and a 30 percent increase...

Evidence-Based Medicine for Family Planning in Jordan

Nadia Al-Alawi
Shirin Aladwan
Minki Chatterji
Soon Kyu Choi
Marianne El-Khoury
Researchers partnered with USAID to study the impact of Evidence-Based Medicine programs on changing family planning providers’ biases against injectable contraceptives. Overall, researchers found no change in provider practices and self-reported prescriptions.

Training Informal Healthcare Providers to Improve the Quality of Care in India

Informal healthcare workers with little to no training provide more than 70 percent of all primary care in rural India. In this study, researchers evaluated the impact of a nine-month training...