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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 School-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on High School Dropout Rates in Mexico

Ciro Avitabile
Janina Cuevas
Rafael de Hoyos
In Mexico, researchers evaluated a math tutoring intervention and a cognitive behavioral therapy-based (CBT) program that aimed to encourage students to slow their decision-making processes and to improve academic readiness for secondary school students at risk of dropping out. The study found mixed...

Providing information on wood heating to decrease indoor air pollution in France

Coralie Chevallier
Elise Huillery
Mathieu Perona
Rita Abdel Sater
Researchers evaluated the impact of general and personalized information regarding the relationship between wood burning and indoor pollution on households’ knowledge of pollution and their pollution mitigation efforts. Both general and personalized information increased households’ awareness of...

The Impact of Emergency Cash Assistance in a Pandemic

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation in Colombia to assess the effects of emergency cash assistance on the well-being of households. Recipients of the UCT experienced improved financial health, food access, and psychological well-being. Colombia’s newly implemented mobile money system...

Increasing Take-Up of the Earned Income Tax Credit

Across six randomized evaluations, researchers studied the impact of low-cost, low-touch informational interventions, or “nudges,” on take-up of the federal and state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in California. None of the interventions had an impact on EITC take-up, suggesting that information...

Housing Lottery to Increase Demand for Formal Government Housing and Improve Welfare in Ethiopia

In low- to middle-income countries around the world, nearly one billion people lived in urban informal settlements as of 2018. Rapid urbanization in most large African cities has led to both more people and a higher proportion of people living in informal settlements over time. Researchers conducted...

Extending Health Insurance to the Informal Sector Through Microfinance in Nicaragua

Freddy Solis Diaz
Martha Azucena Gonzalez
Laurel Hatt
Mursaleena Islam
This evaluation measured the determinants of insurance enrollment as well as the impacts of having insurance for informal sector workers by randomly varying the costs and convenience of signing up for a government health insurance program available to formal and informal sector workers in Nicaragua...

Measuring the Impact of Microfinance in Hyderabad, India

Researchers evaluated the impact of increased access to microcredit on the economic and social well-being of women and their families in Hyderabad, India. They found that microcredit had mixed effects on business activities and little to no effect on women’s empowerment or children’s education.