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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.

Vouchers for Private Schooling in Colombia

Joshua Angrist
Erik Bloom
Elizabeth King
Colombia used lotteries to distribute vouchers which partially covered the cost of private secondary school for students who maintained satisfactory academic progress. Three years after the lotteries, winners were about 10 percentage points more likely to have finished 8th grade, primarily because...

Perceptions of Female Leaders in India

Researchers studied the impact a quota system which randomly assigned villages in India to reserve village council positions for women. They found that quotas improved voters’ perceptions of the effectiveness of women as leaders and subsequently improved women’s electoral chances.

Household Water Connections in Tangier, Morocco

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to look at the effect of private connections in a setting where most households already had access to high-quality water through public taps. They found that households had a high willingness to pay for piped water, and while home water connection had no...

Incentives for Nurses in the Public Health Care System in Udaipur, India

Researchers worked with the NGO Seva Mandir to measure the impact of an incentives program that aimed to improve Assistant Nurse Midwife (ANM) attendance in rural clinics in Udaipur. Although the incentive program initially led to a large improvement in attendance, effects faded after the first six...

Unpacking the Links from Financial Education to Financial Behaviors in India

Fenella Carpena
Jeremy Shapiro
Bilal Zia
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation of a video-based financial education course on participants’ financial behaviors in India to study which components of financial education programs are most effective. While the course alone had no impact on participants’ abilities to carry out financial...

Providing Sexual and Reproductive Health Advice via SMS in Uganda

This evaluation tested whether increasing access to information about sexual and reproductive health via a text message service could reduce rates of risky behavior. The new text message service did not have a measurable impact on health knowledge, but led people to perceive the risks associated...

Providing Endowments to Improve Bargaining Outcomes for Microentrepreneurs in Ghana

Gisella Kagy
Lena Song
Researchers randomly provided more or less cash to garment-making firm owners in Ghana before a bargaining game to evaluate the impact of endowment on the negotiated sale price of a good. Owners of garment-making microenterprises with lower household liquidity agreed to lower sale prices during the...