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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.

When do Media Stations Support Political Accountability? A Field Experiment in Mexico

Christopher Lucas
Researchers are using a randomized evaluation in Mexico to study the incentives media stations face when choosing to provide voters with indicators of their incumbent party’s performance in office.

Text Messages as Reminders for Antiretroviral Medication Adherence in Kenya

Researchers introduced text message reminders to evaluate their effect on Kenyan patients taking their antiretrovirals consistently and not skipping doses. Patients who received weekly text messages were more likely to take their medicine 90 percent of the time and were less likely to skip doses for...

Student Incentive Structures in Malawi

Hyuncheol Kim
Hyuk Harry Son
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of two different performance-based incentives on students’ test scores, motivation, and behavior in Malawi. They find that tournament-style incentives that rewarded the top performers among a large group lowered test scores and student...

The Impact of Feedback on University Student Performance in Spain

Ghazala Azmat
Antonio Cabrales
Nagore Iriberri
Researchers shared information on students’ relative academic standing among university students in Spain to evaluate the impact of this information on student performance and satisfaction. Providing students with information on their relative standing led to a short-term decrease in academic...

The Impact of Group-Based Grain Storage Schemes on Farmers’ Savings and Incomes in Kenya

Researchers worked with existing savings clubs in Kenya to study the effect of two interventions on savings: the provision of communal crop storage devices and the provision of savings accounts earmarked for farm purchases. Researchers find that the products were popular: about 56% of farmers took...