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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.

Are Information Disclosures Effective in the Credit Card Market? Evidence from Mexico

Alan Elizondo
Eduardo Laguna-Müggenburg
Researchers tested the effect of seven different information disclosure messages on credit card clients of a large Mexican bank and found that non-standard information disclosures reduced debt levels and lowered delinquency more effectively than legally mandated disclosures.

Informal Math Games to Improve Children's Readiness for Learning School Mathematics in India

By the time they reach primary school, disadvantaged children often lag behind their more advantaged peers in the skills and concepts of formal math. To address this issue, researchers examined the impact of math games, played in preschools and exercising early emerging, universal and intuitive...

Real-Time Pricing to Reduce Electricity Use in the United States

During periods of high electricity use that strain the grid, electricity customers do not have any reason to conserve because they pay a fixed price per kilowatt hour of power. In this study, the researcher evaluated the impact on electricity usage of a real-time pricing scheme, which charges...

The Value of Regulatory Discretion: Estimates from Environmental Inspections in India

Researchers are evaluating the impact of making environmental inspections of high-polluting industrial plants more frequent and removing regulator discretion in selecting plants for inspection on regulatory compliance and pollution emissions in Gujarat, India.

Asset-based Microfinance in Pakistan

Faisal Bari
Kashif Malik
In Pakistan, researchers partnered with a microfinance institution to conduct a randomized evaluation to test how larger asset-based loans for purchasing business equipment, combined with flexible repayment options, affected business performance and household well-being. Business owners who received...

Using GPS-enabled Cellphones to Monitor Agricultural Extension Agents in Paraguay

Researchers partnered with the Government of Paraguay to measure the impact of a new monitoring technology—GPS-enabled cell phones—on the job performance of agricultural extension agents (AEAs). Overall, cell phones improved AEAs’ performance by increasing the share of farmers visited, and...

The Impact of Secondary Education on Economic Decision-Making in Malawi

Researchers evaluated whether randomly providing financial support for secondary education could improve economic decision-making in addition to educational outcomes for secondary school students in Malawi. Results show that the intervention improved educational outcomes and economic decision-making...

Tablet-Based Financial Education in Colombia

Matthew Bird
Lina Cardona-Sosa
Pablo Lavado
Researchers collaborated with Fundación Capital and the Government of Colombia to conduct a randomized evaluation of LISTA, a tablet-based financial education program designed for participants in Colombia's government CCT program, to study its impact on financial knowledge and behavior. LISTA had...