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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.

Does Continuous Professional Development Improve Teaching at the Right Level in Zambia?

Researchers are evaluating the impact of the “Teaching at the Right Level” program on students’ foundational literacy and mathematics skills.

Combating Corruption in Community Development in Indonesia

J-PAL affiliate Benjamin Olken (MIT) devised a method to measure corruption and used it to evaluate alternative strategies to reduce corruption on Indonesian roadbuilding projects. The evaluation tested two types of strategies: encouraging community participation and increasing the probability of...

Deposit Collectors in the Philippines

Researchers evaluated the impact of a door-to-door deposit-collecting service, which regularly collected funds from clients’ homes to be deposited at a local bank, on clients’ savings. Results demonstrated that clients who lived farther from a bank were more likely to take up the service, and...

Teacher Performance Pay in Andhra Pradesh, India

Venkatesh Sundararaman
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh to measure the relative effectiveness of conditional versus unconditional bonuses on improving the quality of schools. Offering conditional incentives to individual teachers was a cost-effective way to improve...

Union Leaders and Factory Workers’ Collective Action in Myanmar

Labor movements can improve workers’ lives but face great difficulty in getting workers to agree on common goals and take collective actions. In garment factory workers’ group discussions on minimum wage policies in Myanmar, researchers randomly included union leaders to study whether the presence...

Voter Information Campaigns and the Delhi Municipal Councilors 2011 Election

Nils Enevoldsen
Michael Walton
Although 20 percent of the population in New Delhi, India live in slums and represent an important voter group for politicians, public service provision in slums remains inadequate. In an ongoing study, researchers evaluated whether providing information to government officials and slum dwellers can...

Improving Women’s Labor and Welfare Outcomes through Microfinance in Uganda

Researchers in rural Western Uganda tested whether a microfinance program can help women borrowers switch out of subsistence agriculture to other labor activities, such as entrepreneurship or small-scale trading. While microloans helped women switch into service-based jobs including small-scale...