Evaluations

Policy Publications

Search our database of policy briefcases, bulletins, and evidence reviews. Briefcases summarize the results and policy recommendations from one randomized evaluation, while bulletins synthesize the broader policy lessons emerging from multiple evaluations on the same topic. Evidence reviews summarize an existing academic literature review, like a handbook chapter or white paper, for a policy audience.

Displaying 46-54 of 87
parents attending school information meetings. Photo: Aude Guerrucci | J-PAL

Considering All the Options: A Low-Cost Way to Reduce School Dropout

Last Updated:
Last Updated:
November 19, 2018
Parent meetings with school principals that provided guidance on selecting academic tracks helped reduce grade repetition and high school dropout among low-achieving students in France.
Young women take a group photo

Reducing Pregnancy Among Adolescents

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Last Updated:
June 12, 2018
Across a range of programs, interventions that successfully changed the calculus of costs and benefits of unprotected sexual activity and childbirth delayed pregnancy among adolescents. Some programs directly altered costs and benefits while others shifted perceptions of them.
Youth in safety vests painting a wall

Stopping a Bullet with a Summer Job

Last Updated:
Last Updated:
March 12, 2018
Summer youth employment programs that provided minimum wage summer jobs to mainly disadvantaged youth in New York City and Chicago reduced arrests for violent crimes, incarceration, and premature deaths.
College students

Simplifying the Barriers Along the Bridge to College

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Last Updated:
February 20, 2018
While past approaches to helping students transition to college have focused on increasing financial aid, the college application process itself presents a barrier to college access. J-PAL's new policy bulletin summarizes five randomized evaluations of interventions designed to improve college...
Young men participate in BAM exercise

Practicing Choices, Preventing Crime

Last Updated:
Last Updated:
June 1, 2017
Cognitive behavioral therapy helped young men in cities in Liberia and the United States become more focused on the future, reducing criminal and violent behavior and increasing graduation rates when delivered in school.
Biometric authentication using thumbprint

Smartcards for Smarter Payments

Last Updated:
Last Updated:
September 6, 2017
In India, a biometrically authenticated payment system reduced corruption and substantially improved the delivery of government social assistance programs despite partial implementation.
Children do arithmetic in chalk on a stone floor in India

Roll Call: Getting Children into School

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Last Updated:
August 8, 2017
Student participation is sensitive to the perceived costs and benefits of education. Although the costs are immediate and easy to observe, school quality and the long-run benefits of education are more difficult to perceive. Children, not only their parents, are important to consider when designing...
Two students work on a whiteboard

What Can We Learn from Charter School Lotteries in the United States?

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Last Updated:
May 1, 2017
The estimated impacts of charter schools have varied widely. In Massachusetts, students who won lotteries for charter schools located in urban areas often did substantially better than students who lost, while students who won lotteries for charter schools in nonurban areas fared, on average, about...
Shopkeeper writes a receipt

The Role of the VAT for Tax Enforcement

Last Updated:
Last Updated:
March 20, 2017
The Value Added Tax (VAT) system, which generates a paper trail on transactions between firms, facilitated tax enforcement by spreading the impact of enforcement measures up the production chain in a study with over 400,000 firms in Chile.