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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.

Community-Based Forestry Management to Improve Natural Resource Management and Farming Productivity in Ethiopia

Erwin Bulte
Goytom Abraha Kahsay
Fekadu Tefera Meka
researchers are evaluating the impact of CBFM on farmers’ agricultural productivity, adoption of modern technology, rural livelihoods, and forest conservation.

Estimating the Human Costs of Debtor Prisons

We aim to provide causal evidence on the social costs of debtor prisons and on the financial market consequences of its potential abolition in Egypt. To do so, we will conduct a set of randomized controlled trials. The first randomized experiments will be with an NGO that pays off the debts of...

Closing the Early Learning Gap for Roma Children in Bulgaria

Elise Huillery
Kindergarten education is vital for a child’s success in primary school and later in life. However, kindergarten enrollment rates of children from ethnic minorities remain low. Researchers measured the impact of providing incentives and information about the importance of early education on the...

The Welfare Effects of Behavioral Energy Conservation in the United States

In the United States, researchers evaluated the social welfare impacts of one very popular nudge to decrease energy consumption—Home Energy Reports (HERs). While they found that the HERs increased social welfare overall, these gains were far less than those reported by previous evaluations that did...

Agricultural Microinsurance for Sugar Cane Farmers in Kenya

Researchers partnered with a large sugar cane company to see if delaying the premium payment until after the harvest would increase farmers’ demand for insurance. Researchers found that farmers were much more likely to purchase insurance when the payments were delayed until after the harvest.