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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.

Land Leases to Semi-Nomadic Herders in Peri-Urban Areas of Mongolia

Herders may change their herding practices to better sustain the land if they own rights to it, which could also translate into bigger and healthier animals, and more income for the herders. In this study, carried out near two cities in Mongolia, researchers evaluated the impact of private property...

The Impact of Poverty Reduction on Child Health, Nutrition, and Sleep in the United States

Nathan Fox
Sarah Halpern-Meekin
Emma Hart
Alicia Kunin-Batson
Katherine Magnuson
Kimberly Noble
Jessica Sperber
Hiro Yoshikawa
To understand the causal impact of poverty reduction on children’s health, nutrition, sleep, and healthcare utilization, among other outcomes, researchers randomly assigned new mothers to receive an unconditional cash transfer of $333 (high-cash group) or $20 per month (low-cash group) in the Baby’s...

Rules of Thumb: Providing Timely Financial Management Advice at Scale in India

Researchers evaluated the impact of providing easy-to-remember and easy-to-adopt rules of thumb to microentrepreneurs in India in order to help improve their businesses performance.

Leveraging the Parents and Children Together (PACT) Program for Increased Parental Engagement in the United States

Researchers evaluated the impact of providing small behavioral tools, including a goal-setting website, text message reminders, and social rewards, to parents to encourage their participation in the Parents And Children Together (PACT) program. These behavioral tools more than doubled parents’...

Leveraging Technology to Incentivize Student Effort in India

Using a technology-based math curriculum, researchers evaluated the impact of different incentive types—rewarding continuous effort in the classroom versus rewarding test performance—on student learning. Results indicate that effort-based incentives can be a more effective and cost-effective way of...

Comparing Cash and Mobile Transfers in Niger

Rachid Boumnijel
Amanda McClelland
Niall Tierney
In partnership with Concern Worldwide, researchers examined the relative effectiveness of traditional versus mobile cash transfers in Niger. Households who received electronic transfers had more diverse diets than those who received traditional cash transfers, in part due to time savings and shifts...

Delegating Property Tax Collection to Local Elites in the DRC

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation during the 2018 property tax collection campaign to test the impact of delegating tax collection to local chiefs. Where local chiefs collected taxes, households were more tax compliant than where state collectors collected, mainly because chiefs had...