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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.

Increasing Take-Up of the Earned Income Tax Credit

Across six randomized evaluations, researchers studied the impact of low-cost, low-touch informational interventions, or “nudges,” on take-up of the federal and state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in California. None of the interventions had an impact on EITC take-up, suggesting that information...

Instruction and Financial Incentives to Improve Covid-19 Knowledge in Mozambique

James Allen
James Riddell IV
James Allen IV
Arlete Mahumane
Tanya Rosenblat
Hang Yu
In Mozambique, researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test whether teaching about Covid-19 prevention and/or financial learning incentives enhanced participants’ knowledge related to Covid-19. They found that both interventions improved Covid-19 knowledge separately and, moreover...

Housing Lottery to Increase Demand for Formal Government Housing and Improve Welfare in Ethiopia

In low- to middle-income countries around the world, nearly one billion people lived in urban informal settlements as of 2018. Rapid urbanization in most large African cities has led to both more people and a higher proportion of people living in informal settlements over time. Researchers conducted...

Connecting Egyptian Women to Gender-Based Violence Resources via Social Media during Covid-19

Elizabeth Parker-Magyar
Researchers partnered with the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights to evaluate the effect of educational social media and TV campaigns on women’s attitudes and behaviors around responding to GBV and IPV. The social media campaign increased women’s knowledge and use of resources, but had no impact on...

Cash Transfers’ Effects on Food Consumption in Mexico

Carlos Chiapa
Silvia Prina
Irvin Rojas
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of the anti-poverty cash transfer program, PROSPERA, on food consumption for families living in poverty in Mexico. Households consumed enough food both before and after receiving the cash transfer.

Impact of school-based training on social cohesion for immigrant children in Finland

Matti Sarvimaki
Mikko Silliman
Marco Tabellini
Researchers partnered with a local non-profit, Walter, to evaluate the effectiveness of two school-based social cohesion interventions for immigrants’ children in Finnish schools.

Flipcharts, School Inputs, and Retrospective versus Prospective Analyses in Kenya

Sylvie Moulin
Eric Zitzewitz
Researchers provided educational flipcharts to 89 randomly selected Kenyan primary schools and evaluated their impact on student learning, comparing retrospective and prospective estimates. In the prospective study, the estimated impact of flipcharts on student test scores was found to be close to...

Influencing the Provision of Social Services through Mandated Female Representation in Policymaking in India

Researchers studied the policy consequences of mandated representation of female policymakers by determining whether there was any difference in the provision of social services between male- and female-led village councils. Results suggest that reservations for female leaders affected policy...