In partnership with Concern Worldwide, researchers examined the relative effectiveness of traditional versus mobile cash transfers in Niger. Households who received electronic transfers had more diverse diets than those who received traditional cash transfers, in part due to time savings and shifts in women’s decision-making power within the household.

Despite the initial promise of microcredit, randomized evaluations have found at best modest effects of microloans on poverty. Digitized payments from government cash transfer programs provide a unique opportunity to offer microcredit while addressing some of its shortcomings, potentially reducing interest rates, default risk, and repayment issues. Researchers are partnering with IPA, Banco BDH León, Banco ADOPEM, and Progresando con Solidaridad (or ProSoli, the Dominican Republic’s government-to-person transfer program), to test whether loans with automatic repayment through ProSoli lead to more productive investments and higher profits and income, leading to higher consumption, wellbeing, and graduation from the transfer program.

Researchers partnered with the Côte d'Ivoire government to measure the short- and long-term impacts of a public works program, along with complementary trainings on basic entrepreneurship and job search skills. In the short term, the program led to a shift toward wage jobs (as opposed to self-employment), higher earnings and savings, and improved well-being. However, most of these effects dissipated in the long-run.

This study evaluated the impact of strongly-worded peer comparison review letters sent to high prescribers of quetiapine by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on prescribing behavior and patient-level outcomes. Researchers found that the letters caused substantial and long-lasting reductions in quetiapine prescribing, with no evidence of negative effects on patients.

Researchers evaluated whether cash transfers and decision-making nudges could help low-income pregnant women in Nairobi, Kenya deliver where they wanted and in a high-quality facility. They found that cash transfers, conditioned on precommitment to a delivery facility, led to more effective birth planning and increased the likelihood that women delivered at higher-quality facilities.

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to measure the impact of unconditional price discounts and price discounts conditional on including a woman on formal purchased land titles in traditionally informal settlements in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Price discounts increased demand for formal land titles, and that demand increased by the same amount whether or not the discount was conditional on including a woman on the title.

In many countries, there has recently been an increased interest in targeting labor market programs to unemployed persons who would benefit the most from them. Researchers evaluated the impact of providing a statistical targeting system to case workers in government employment agencies on their choice of labor market programs for jobseekers. Results showed that caseworkers largely ignored the statistical information provided by the targeting system, and that offering this information did not have any impact on their choice of program.

Researchers evaluated whether giving traditional birth attendants (TBAs) cash incentives for maternal postnatal referrals can increase uptake of skilled maternal postnatal care. Cash rewards increased referrals made by TBAs by 182 percent and more than tripled the proportion of clients that attended postnatal care. However, clients of incentivized TBAs were still much less likely to receive postnatal care compared to mothers delivering in a health facility, suggesting that other potential barriers may prevent women from seeking and accessing care.

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of providing recently unemployed individuals informational brochures about job search strategies that motivated an active search on their labor market outcomes. Providing informational brochures improved the employment and earnings of job seekers who exhibited an increased risk of long-term unemployment but had no measurable effects on the general population.

In Niger, researchers evaluated the impact of a training program for input distributors (agro-dealers) on smallholder access to and use of agricultural inputs. Researchers found that trainings for agro-dealers combined with a demonstration plot increased the share of farmers adopting improved seeds, but did not increase the quantity used to have an impact on agricultural output.

Researchers partnered with financial providers in the United Kingdom to evaluate the effectiveness of various disclosure designs aimed at supporting consumers’ financial decisions across savings products. Although most disclosures increased the number of consumers that switched to higher-yielding savings account, the effects were relatively modest, even among those who received the most effectively designed disclosure and those with substantial financial incentives to switch. These findings suggest that low attention limits the potential of financial disclosures and that disclosures need to be more explicitly designed to better capture consumers' attention.

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to evaluate the impact of computer-assisted learning (CAL) on student test scores. The CAL program improved students’ math and language test scores, but increasing the time students spent on CAL did not lead to additional gains.