Following the implementation of a policy mandating lower-caste representation in some local village councils in India, researchers evaluated how lower-caste presidents invested in and distributed goods. They found that disadvantaged lower-caste groups received more public goods in councils with an elected leader from their own group.

Researchers evaluated the academic impact of a “Cadillac” OST program in Washington, DC. Researchers found that the program increased students’ problem-solving and reading comprehension scores after two years.

Researchers designed a field study to identify how information and communication affect intra-household decisions. They found that Filipino spouses who don't control the household spending and savings decisions deposit money into their own accounts in private settings and commit it to consumption for themselves in public settings.

In Lusaka, Zambia, researchers compared the effect of financial and non-financial reward schemes on sales of female condoms. They found that non-financial incentives were more effective than financial rewards at motivating hair stylists to sell female condoms to their customers.

Women who received private access to vouchers for contraceptives were more likely to take up and use contraception, compared to women whose husbands were involved in the voucher program.

Researchers are testing whether giving vendors money to pay off their outstanding debts or offering financial literacy trainings can help break these borrowers' cycles of debt.

Researchers assessed whether the provision of health training alongside microfinance services impacted the health or financial behavior of Peruvian microcredit clients. They found that additional health training affected neither.

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation of a bundled microcredit and health education program, delivered both to mixed-gender and female-only loan groups in Benin, to evaluate its impacts on health knowledge, health behaviors, and social outcomes. The integrated package of group microcredit and health education led to gains in women’s knowledge of both malaria and HIV/AIDS, but those gains did not translate into improvements in health behaviors.

In an ongoing evaluation, researchers are studying the relationship between teacher and student motivation, family participation, and student achievement in rural non-formal education (NFE) centers.

Researchers evaluated a multi-faceted approach aimed at improving long term income of the ultra-poor in Peru. They found that the approach had long-lasting economic and self-employment impacts and that the long-run benefits, measured in terms of household expenditures, outweighed their up-front costs.

In this randomized evaluation in Rajasthan, India, researchers examined the effectiveness of five interventions on police performance: limiting administrative transfers; rotating duties and days off; elevating community involvement; incorporating on-duty training; and implementing “decoy” visits by survey enumerators. While decoy visits and trainings improved police performance, the other three interventions were inconsistently implemented and had no detectable impact.

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation of a cash transfer program in Morocco to estimate the impact on attendance and enrollment of a “labeled cash transfer” (LCT): a small cash transfer made to parents of school-aged children in poor rural communities, not conditional on school attendance but explicitly labeled as an education support program.

In Mexico, researchers are testing whether this lagging productivity could be due to lower managerial capacity. They found that providing subsidized managerial consulting to Mexican SMEs boosted their productivity and hiring.