The researcher used a randomized evaluation in Papua New Guinea to study the impact of the Community Auxiliary Police (CAP), a program that devolves policing powers to carefully selected community members. Results suggest increased state presence may have widened the gap between men and women’s preferences for state versus customary authorities but did not reduce crime.

Workers with criminal records face substantially lower chances of securing employment compared to similar workers without such records. Researchers evaluated the effectiveness of different approaches, including wage subsidies, crime and safety insurance, past performance reviews, criminal record history, and objective information on worker performance, on managers’ willingness to hire people with criminal records. The study found that policies which directly addressed hiring managers’ concerns about productivity and risk effectively increased demand for workers with criminal records.

In Chicago, researchers evaluated an intensive two-on-one math tutoring program for 9th and 10th grade male students in public schools to assess the effectiveness of individualized instruction. Students who were randomly assigned to tutoring scored higher on math exams, earned better grades in math, and were more likely to pass high school classes.

Researchers examined whether a program that provides people who are incarcerated with services both prior to and after their release could improve employment prospects and reduce recidivism. One year later, the program increased employment and reduced the likelihood of re-arrest. However, earnings among the people with a criminal conviction who were employed were low and left many below the poverty line.

Researchers have partnered with a non-profit debt management provider and IPA to evaluate whether reframing difficult, long-lasting tasks, such as paying off large debts, into more easily-attainable “sub-goals” can help borrowers accomplish their goals of debt repayment and increase client retention in a debt management program.

Employers in the low-skill and entry-level job market often lack information on job seekers’ abilities, which can reduce interview invitations and job offers for job seekers, especially for disadvantaged groups such as women. Researchers partnered with the South African Department of Labour to evaluate the impact of reference letters on employer response rates and on employment outcomes for unemployed young people.

Researchers compared the effects of face-to-face and virtual peer interaction on the submission and quality of business proposals by individuals from 49 African countries enrolled in an online entrepreneurship course. They found that face-to-face networks and the virtual interaction of groups of entrepreneurs of the same nationality increased the submission of business proposals to a funding competition, but that virtual interaction had no effect when groups were formed with entrepreneurs of different nationalities. Virtual interaction among entrepreneurs of the same nationality was also found to increase the quality of submitted business proposals.

Many firms rely on social networks to find potential employees, and to find out more information about them. In Kolkata, India, researchers tested whether using social networks for recruitment was an effective strategy for finding highly qualified candidates in a laboratory setting. They found that high-ability participants only referred high-skilled candidates when offered performance incentives, and low-ability participants failed to refer high-skilled candidates under any incentive structure.

Those self-employed in microenterprises, who often report low profits and own few assets, account for fifty percent of the labor force in low-income countries. Researchers are conducting a randomized evaluation to test the effect of relieving constraints to microenterprise relocation on business income in Kampala, Uganda.

Workers without social connections may be disadvantaged in the labor market because employers favor applicants who have been referred. Researchers tested three interventions in an online labor market to investigate why employers are more likely to hire referred workers. First, referrals provide a signal that workers will perform well and have lower turnover. Referred workers outperformed and had lower churn than non-referred workers with the same observable characteristics. This is true even at companies to which they were not referred. Second, being referred makes workers more productive. Referred workers were particularly productive when they work with their referrers. However, workers’ concerns about their reputation with their referrer or their referrer’s position at the firm did not lead workers to exert more effort.

Researchers ran an evaluation in Niger to determine if training adults to use mobile phones could improve their learning outcomes when added to a standard adult education program. The mobile phone program increased student writing and math test scores relative to the standard curriculum.

By comparing the impacts of soft skills training, a combination of soft and hard skills training, and no training, researchers seek to determine whether soft skills training alone is an effective and efficient way to increase the numbers of promotions offered to women and prepare women to be strong supervisors.

Researchers introduced a recruitment drive for a firm in Malawi to evaluate the impact of referral-based hiring on women’s employment at the company. Results from the randomized evaluation indicate that men systematically referred fewer women, and women’s referral of other qualified women was not enough to offset men’s behavior.

Researchers evaluated the impact of poverty reduction via an unconditional cash transfer to mothers on child neurodevelopment. Children in families that received a $333 monthly transfer displayed different brain activity patterns than children whose mothers received only $20 a month.

Researchers evaluated the impact of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and cash transfers on functional impairment (or difficulty performing daily tasks), depression, and food security among adults 55 and older living alone in Tamil Nadu, India. At a three-week follow-up, cash transfers improved participants’ reported ability to perform daily tasks and led to a small decline in depression, while neither CBT nor the combination of the two impacted these outcomes.