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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.

Designing Contracts for Healthcare Providers in India

Katherine Donato
Manoj Mohanan
Yulya Truskinovsky
Researchers evaluated two types of reward contracts—one that rewarded providers for increased use of inputs and one that rewarded providers for improved health outputs—among rural obstetric care providers in India. They found that both contracts reduced post-partum hemorrhage by 20-23 percent.

Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA) in Sierra Leone

Niklas Buehren
Markus Goldstein
Andrea Smurra
Researchers evaluated the impact of a program in Sierra Leone called Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA) that aims to address this problem by bundling health education, vocational skills training, and micro-credit. Researchers found that, while girls experienced higher teen pregnancy...

Peer Pressure and Educational Investments in the United States

To test whether students’ educational investments are affected by peer pressure, researchers offered high school students the opportunity to sign up for free access to an online SAT preparatory course. Some students were told that their decision to sign up would be public, and others were told that...

The Impact of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Cash Transfers on High-Risk Young Men in Liberia

Sebastian Chaskel
Margaret Sheridan
To understand the long-term effectiveness of CBT among adults, researchers evaluated the impact of a short-term CBT program and the distribution of unconditional cash transfers on the behavior of high-risk young men in Liberia. CBT reduced criminal behavior among participants both in the short run...

Clinical Decision Support for Outpatient High-Cost Radiology Ordering in the United States

Bruce Darrow
Joseph Doyle
Joseph Kannry
Madhu Mazumdar
David Mendelson
Researchers are studying the impact of a clinical decision support system on the ordering of high-cost scans.

Improving Electoral Integrity with Information and Communications Technology in Uganda

Clark Gibson
Danielle Jung

Researchers sent letters to polling stations announcing smartphone vote-tally audits to evaluate the impact of audits on electoral irregularities such as non-adherence to transparency regulations and falsified vote tallies. Relative to a comparison group, letters increased the number of polling...