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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.

Donor Response to Aid Effectiveness in a Direct Mail Fundraising Experiment in the United States

Daniel H. Wood
Researchers examined whether individuals gave more after receiving information about a charity’s impact. They found that providing potential donors with rigorous evidence about a charity’s effectiveness increased the likelihood of giving to a major U.S. charity for large prior donors, but decreased...

Election Fraud and Government Legitimacy in Afghanistan

Researchers evaluated the impact of photographic monitoring technology on aggregation fraud and perceptions of government legitimacy during the 2010 parliamentary elections in Afghanistan. The announcement of a new monitoring technology reduced both theft of election materials and vote counts for...

Returns to Information and Temporary Discounts on Remittances for Guatemalan and Salvadoran Migrants in Washington DC

Kate Ambler
Diego Aycinena
Researchers evaluated two programs to explore factors that may influence the amount of remittances people send: a temporary discount on the transaction fee and the provision of information about the returns to education in their home country. While the information about education did not change...

The Impact of Employment on High-Risk Men in Liberia

In Liberia, researchers tested the effect of an intensive agricultural training program that also provided agricultural supplies and psychosocial counseling on employment activities, income, and socio-political integration. Fourteen months after the program, participants spent more time working in...

The Impact of Informational Interventions about Police Alternatives on Police Reliance in the United States

Meghna Baskar
Tony Cheng
Rei Mariman
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of providing information about police alternatives on individuals' reported likelihood of calling the police and a follow-up randomized evaluation to understand key public-safety stakeholders’ receptiveness of police alternatives. The...

The Impact of Commitment Contracts on Workplace Productivity in India

Self-control problems can lead people to fall short of their personal and professional goals, often resulting in lower than desired workplace productivity. Researchers, in partnership with an Indian data entry firm, conducted a randomized evaluation to test whether self-control problems existed in...