The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Anchored by a network of more than 900 researchers at universities around the world, J-PAL conducts randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty.
The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Anchored by a network of more than 1,000 researchers at universities around the world, J-PAL conducts randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty.
Our affiliated professors are based at over 120 universities and conduct randomized evaluations around the world to design, evaluate, and improve programs and policies aimed at reducing poverty. They set their own research agendas, raise funds to support their evaluations, and work with J-PAL staff on research, policy outreach, and training.
Our research, policy, and training work is fundamentally better when it is informed by a broad range of perspectives.
J-PAL Affiliated Professor
Associate Professor
University of Chicago
Damon Jones is an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. He conducts research at the intersection of three fields within economics: public finance, the field of economics that analyzes government taxation and spending, using models of choice to predict the effects of policy and economic notions of well-being to measure the policy’s benefit or harm to consumers; household finance, the branch of economics that focuses on the financial decisions, saving, borrowing and insurance, at the household level; and behavioral economics, the branch of economics that uses insights from psychology and empirical evidence to explore the ways in which human behavior deviates from the neoclassical model of consumer decision-making. His current research topics include income tax policy, social security, retirement and retirement savings, and the interaction between employer-provided benefits and labor market outcomes. Damon earned a BA in Economics from Stanford University and a PhD in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Damon serves as a Scientific Advisor for J-PAL North America's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion portfolio.