Researchers partnered with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District in California to evaluate the effects of a variety of enrollment schemes in time-varying pricing plans on electricity consumption. Results show that households which were enrolled in time-varying pricing plans by default tended to stick to their default enrollment with only few households choosing to opt-out, suggesting the presence of strong default effects, meaning that people lean toward the course of action requiring the least effort by sticking with a pre-set default option

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation of cricket teams in rural India to identify whether team composition could improve intergroup harmony. Collaborative contact between cricket players of different castes reduced prejudice toward members of lower castes and increased cross-caste interaction, while adversarial contact increased prejudice in intergroup interactions.

Researchers worked with existing savings clubs in Kenya to study the effect of two interventions on savings: the provision of communal crop storage devices and the provision of savings accounts earmarked for farm purchases. Researchers find that the products were popular: about 56% of farmers took up the products. Respondents in the maize storage intervention were 23 percentage points more likely to store maize (on a base of 69%), 37 percentage points more likely to sell maize (on a base of 36%) and (conditional on selling) sold later and at higher prices.

Researchers are conducting a randomized evaluation to test the impact of being offered a summer job through Philadelphia’s WorkReady program on outcomes related to criminal justice involvement, employment, and education.

In Mali, researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test how the design and timing of a physical market for inputs (village input fairs) with varying levels of credit access affected farmers’ investment decisions. They found that farmers with access to credit from VIFs organized after harvest increased their demand for inputs while farmers offered VIFs at planting without access to credit did not.

Making electricity and learning materials in students’ native language more widely available in schools may be beneficial to student learning, but existing evidence is sparse. Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of school electrification, delivered alongside mixed-language digital educational materials, on student exam scores and pass rates. They found that neither increased electricity access nor learning material in their native language improved students’ academic performance.

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation on measuring the impact of celebrity Twitter endorsement for a child immunization campaign on the public’s opinion and behavior towards immunization. Celebrity endorsement increased Twitter engagement with the immunization campaign, primarily when celebrities authored messages themselves and did not explicitly cite credible public health sources. Celebrity endorsement led to increased communication and knowledge about health behaviors in individuals’ communities, though there was no impact on an individual’s immunization decisions for their children.