In 2017, Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) Peru and J-PAL Latin America and the Caribbean (J-PAL LAC) began a collaboration with the Peruvian civil association Aporta—the social impact platform of Breca, a conglomerate of Peruvian companies. The main goal was to promote the use of data and...

As we enter J-PAL’s third decade, there is no shortage of challenges: Climate change, humanitarian crises, persistent bias and discrimination, and lagging early childhood development are all sobering reminders of how much urgent work there is still to do.

Firms using innovative credit-scoring (ICS) have emerged to help banks and peer-to-peer lenders predict potential borrowers’ likelihood to repay a loan. In contrast to traditional credit scoring models that use credit history, ICS uses artificial intelligence to evaluate data unrelated to a borrower...

The past year made it clear that we need to learn to live with this pandemic but not its terrible impact. As vaccines rolled out, field research began to resume and demand soared for evidence-based policy solutions to help people recover from the unprecedented economic shocks of Covid-19.

In the second part of this series, Shobhini Murkerji dives into her second lesson learned: Don’t trade for short gains—play the long game.