Blog

News

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.

Improving Financial Inclusion and Welfare Outcomes among Women through Savings Groups in Ghana

Researchers partnered with Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) to evaluate the impact of VSLAs on rural households. The promotion of these groups led to an improvement in financial inclusion for participants—including, substantial increases in savings and receiving a loan...

Politicians, Publicly-Released Audits of Corruption, and Electoral Outcomes in Brazil

Taking advantage of a federal anticorruption program that randomly assigned municipalities to be audited, the researchers compared the electoral outcomes for mayors in two randomly selected groups of municipalities: those that were audited before and those that were audited after the 2004 election...

Cash Transfers’ Effects on Food Consumption in Mexico

Carlos Chiapa
Silvia Prina
Irvin Rojas
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of the anti-poverty cash transfer program, PROSPERA, on food consumption for families living in poverty in Mexico. Households consumed enough food both before and after receiving the cash transfer.

Text Messages as Reminders for Antiretroviral Medication Adherence in Kenya

David R. Bangsberg
Markus Goldstein
Jessica Haberer
Sylvester Kimaiyo
Leslie MacKeen
Duncan Ngare
John Sidle
Damien de Walque
Researchers introduced text message reminders to evaluate their effect on Kenyan patients taking their antiretrovirals consistently and not skipping doses. Patients who received weekly text messages were more likely to take their medicine 90 percent of the time and were less likely to skip doses for...

Innovative Actions to Improve Student Integration in France (FRATELI)

In France, researchers examined the effect of job-related mentoring and support for university students from low socio-economic backgrounds on their chances of finding employment after graduating. The program did not result in improved job search efforts, greater employment prospects, or better jobs...

Student Incentive Structures in Malawi

Hyuncheol Kim
Hyuk Harry Son
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of two different performance-based incentives on students’ test scores, motivation, and behavior in Malawi. They find that tournament-style incentives that rewarded the top performers among a large group lowered test scores and student...