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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.

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...

Information to Increase Insurance Take-up and Reduce Market Risk in the United States

Richard Domurat
Isaac Menashe
Researchers studied the impact of reminder letters addressing possible barriers related to information and behavior on insurance take-up, as well as their impact on health insurance market risk. The reminder letters reducing informational and behavioral barriers to enrollment increased insurance...

Delivering Clean Water to Households in India

Fiona Burlig
Amir Jina
More than two billion people around the world lack access to clean drinking water, and current approaches to increasing access have fallen short. Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of delivering clean water directly to households on the valuation of clean water, and...

Can mobile phones improve learning? Evidence from a field experiment in Niger

Researchers ran an evaluation in Niger to determine if training adults to use mobile phones could improve their learning outcomes when added to a standard adult education program. The mobile phone program increased student writing and math test scores relative to the standard curriculum.

Providing Therapy and Cash Transfers to Improve Older Adult Mental Health in India

Researchers evaluated the impact of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and cash transfers on functional impairment (or difficulty performing daily tasks), depression, and food security among adults 55 and older living alone in Tamil Nadu, India. At a three-week follow-up, cash transfers improved...

The Impacts of Gender Norms and Women's Relationship Status on Career Ambitions in the United States

Researchers evaluate whether single women exhibit these tendencies in an elite US MBA program by testing whether students reported different ambitions privately and publicly, or if their responses varied when the audience was largely male. Researchers found that when they expected their answers to...

Human-AI Cooperation to Improve Tutoring in the United States

Dora Demszky
Ana Ribeiro
Carly Robinson
Rose E. Wang
In collaboration with FEV Tutor, researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to study whether Tutor CoPilot, an AI language model tool, could enhance tutoring quality and improve student learning outcomes in math. Researchers found that tutor access to Tutor CoPilot improved student learning...