Billions of dollars in government funds go missing each year due to corruption, but there is limited consensus on how best to tackle this global challenge. Researchers leveraged data from Brazil’s long-standing anticorruption program, which holds public lotteries to randomly select municipalities for audit. These government audits, aimed at uncovering the misuse of public resources, reduced corruption by promoting both electoral and judicial accountability.

Researchers in Colombia partnered with Colpensiones, Colombia’s public pension fund administrator, to test the effect of redesigning pension statements on the beneficiaries' understanding of the information presented and the identification of potential errors in their statements.

Researchers are working with the City of Rochester and local social service providers to evaluate the Bridges to Success program, in which participants are paired with mentors who help them move towards economic self-sufficiency.

Researchers conducted two randomized evaluations to test the impacts of providing customized information on predicted case outcomes or conciliation services on labor court settlement rates in Mexico. Both interventions nearly doubled the immediate settlement rate, but only when the plaintiff was there to personally receive the information, and evidence suggests that the interventions increased payments to workers.

A researcher partnered with the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, a consortium formed by US multinational companies, to evaluate the impact of privately enforcing local labor laws on garment factories in Bangladesh. Enforcing the legally-required creation and operation of workplace safety committees increased factories’ compliance with the labor law and some measures of factory safety, without reducing factory efficiency. These effects persisted in the long run and were stronger among factories with good managerial practices.

In partnership with a rural district in Eastern Uganda, researchers are conducting a randomized evaluation to study whether rewarding top-performing teachers with a future posting of their choice incentivizes teachers to improve their attendance and the quality of their teaching.

In Pakistan, researchers are evaluating the impact of using mobile phones to directly connect politicians with voters and give voters the opportunity to provide real-time feedback to their elected representatives.

Researchers will investigate whether mobilizing local political leaders to strengthen the link between local collections and urban services can increase citizens’ willingness to pay for services, improve service delivery, and ultimately revitalize the social compact.