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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.

Information on Tax Compliance and Perceptions of Equity in Tax Policy in Brazil

François Gerard
Evan Kresch
Joana Naritomi
Laura Zoratto
Researchers are conducting an evaluation that randomized the provision of information in a survey to improve the likelihood that citizens paid their municipal property taxes and understood the role that unequal tax burdens played in determining the likelihood of people paying their full tax burden...

Deferring Wages and Labor Supply in Malawi

Lasse Brune
Eric Chyn
Researchers partnered with a tea company in Malawi to study the effects of a savings product that allowed workers to defer payment of a part of their wages. The deferred wages program was generally popular and increased savings; in the longer run, it helped workers improve their houses.

Increasing Access to Security and Justice through Women's Help Desks in Police Stations in India

Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner
Akshay Mangla
Researchers are employing an RCT to evaluate whether the establishment of police station-level Women’s Help Desks (WHDs), as well as the deployment of additional female personnel to these WHDs, improves the responsiveness of frontline officers to women, as well as levels of crime and crime reporting...

Influencing Higher Education Choices through a Customized Digital Application Platform in the Dominican Republic

Researchers are partnering with the Government of the Dominican Republic to introduce a custom tablet application to prospective students on what tertiary education programs, scholarships, and funding options exist based on their interests and finances, as well as employment rates and earnings...

Cash Transfers and Market Access to Increase Household Welfare in Rural Liberia and Malawi

Dahyeon Jeong
Naresh Kumar
David Park
Alan Spearot
In Liberia and Malawi, researchers partnered with Innovations for Poverty Action, GiveDirectly, and USAID to evaluate the impact of an unconditional cash transfer and market access program on food security, spending, income, resilience to health shocks, intimate partner violence, and psychological...

Improving Financial Inclusion through Mobile Banking in Bangladesh

Jean Lee
Jonathan Morduch
Researchers partnered with bKash, one of the leading mobile money providers in Bangladesh, to evaluate the impact of targeted training programs on mobile banking uptake among migrant households. Training increased migrants’ and their families’ adoption of mobile banking, with women adopting the...

Countering Covid-19 Misinformation through WhatsApp in Zimbabwe

Jeremy Bowles
Shelley Liu
In this randomized evaluation in Zimbabwe, researchers studied how social media messages targeting misinformation can affect people’s beliefs about and responses toward Covid-19. The study found that these messages increased participants’ knowledge of Covid-19 information by 7 percentage points and...

The Impact of Personalized Information on Informed School Choice in Chile

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to measure the impact of an information program on parental school choice and long-term student achievement. They found that the intervention shifted household school choices of those who were not enrolled before the intervention toward establishments...