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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.

How Boston’s Summer Employment Program Affects Youth Criminal Justice Outcomes

Researchers evaluated whether Boston’s SYEP had an effect on the criminal justice outcomes of participants and sought to gauge the potential mechanisms driving these effects. The program reduced participants’ violent and property crime-related arraignments.

Impact of Peer Motivation on Worker Productivity in Malawi

Lasse Brune
Researchers at the Lujeri Tea Estates in Malawi evaluated the impact of exposure to more, less, or equally productive peers on tea harvester productivity. They found that increasing the productivity of a worker’s peers meaningfully increased worker productivity, measured in kilograms of tea picked...

Connecting Smallholder Farmers to Agricultural Value Chains in Rwanda

Ammar Kawash
Jonathan Robinson
Alan Spearot
Guanghong Xu
Researchers are evaluating the effects of providing farmers with access to maize processing services that could improve maize quality on their input decisions.

Countering Covid-19 Misinformation through WhatsApp in Zimbabwe

In this randomized evaluation in Zimbabwe, researchers studied how social media messages targeting misinformation can affect people’s beliefs about and responses toward Covid-19. The study found that these messages increased participants’ knowledge of Covid-19 information by 7 percentage points and...

Environmental inspections for pollution regulation enforcement in China

In collaboration with China’s National Environmental Inspection Program, researchers are evaluating the impact of reporting firms’ hourly emissions data to environmental inspectors on the likelihood of firms being inspected, local air pollution, local economic output, and health outcomes.

Mobile Phone Data Compared to Household Surveys to Evaluate the Impact of Cash Transfers in Togo

Emily Aiken
Suzanne Bellue
In Togo, researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the effect of cash grants on people's welfare and if using mobile phone data in impact evaluations yielded the same results as survey data. They found that the cash grant program increased food security, mental health, and self-perceived...

Balwadi Deworming in India

This study evaluated the impact of a preschool nutrition and health project that targeted anemia in the slums of Delhi, India on child health and school attendance. Results showed the program positively impacted weight-gain and school attendance, particularly for groups with high base-line rates of...