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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.

For food-aid recipients, information is power

Research by Abhijit Banerjee, Rema Hanna, Jordan Kyle, Ben Olken, and Sudarno Sumarto finds that distributing a simple card explaining a government aid program leads to poor villagers in Indonesia receiving more of the subsidized rice they are entitled to.

The Power of Religion

The UBI Debate: What We Know – and Don’t Know – About Universal Basic Income

If universal transfers are not fiscally or politically feasible, a promising intervention is to send cash transfers to those who meet some eligibility criteria. Evidence from Indonesia on how to accurately and cost-effectively identify eligible individuals can help inform the design of cash transfer...