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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.

Online Job Portals and Firm Hiring in India

Firms in low- and middle-income countries tend to hire mainly from referral networks, which may limit hiring. Online job portals can expand recruitment networks, but firms may be hesitant to hire unfamiliar candidates outside of their network. Researchers partnered with an online job portal in India...

The Impact of Rapid Performance Feedback on Student Achievement in Nigeria

Researchers are partnering with Bridge International Academies to evaluate the impacts of interleaved problem sets, which allow for rapid performance feedback, on students’ learning outcomes in Nigeria.

The Value of Communication for Mental Health in Ghana

Re searchers used a randomized evaluation to measure the impact of providing mobile calling credits to low-income adults on well-being outcomes in Ghana. Overall, the mobile credit intervention increased the ability for individuals to meet unexpected communication needs, particularly when delivered...

Mitigating the Economic and Mental Health Impacts of Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected health systems and economies across the world. Low-income communities have experienced particularly detrimental impacts, as a lack of financial stability further exacerbated augment the crisis. In partnership with the mental health care center SCARF, researchers...

Impact of Job Uncertainty and Work Experience on Job Seeker Performance, Employment, and Earnings in Malawi

In Lilongwe, Malawi, researchers provided applicants for a health interviewer job with a random chance of receiving a back-up job, regardless of their success in being hired as a health interviewer, to measure (a) the impact of uncertainty on job search performance and (b) the returns to work...

The Impact of Poverty Reduction on Child Health, Nutrition, and Sleep in the United States

Nathan Fox
Sarah Halpern-Meekin
Emma Hart
Alicia Kunin-Batson
Katherine Magnuson
Kimberly Noble
Jessica Sperber
Hiro Yoshikawa
To understand the causal impact of poverty reduction on children’s health, nutrition, sleep, and healthcare utilization, among other outcomes, researchers randomly assigned new mothers to receive an unconditional cash transfer of $333 (high-cash group) or $20 per month (low-cash group) in the Baby’s...

Can Mobile Phones Improve Take-up and Delivery of Maternal Cash Transfer Programs in India?

Researchers are conducting a randomized evaluation to test whether a phone-based information service can increase take-up of India’s maternity cash transfer programs, and whether phone-based feedback can improve local-level program functioning and child health. Research ongoing; Results forthcoming.

Examining Preferences for Inclusive Decision-Making in Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, researchers evaluated how temporary exposure to a community driven development program altered citizens’ preferences for inclusive, participatory approaches to decision-making. In this context, exposure to participatory decision-making increased the value that communities assigned to...