August 2020 Newsletter
J-PAL and King Philanthropies launch $25 million King Climate Action Initiative
Climate change threatens to reverse decades of progress toward alleviating global poverty, a reversal already exacerbated by COVID-19. With generous support from founding partner King Philanthropies, we recently launched the King Climate Action Initiative (K-CAI) to support innovative research and policy engagement at the nexus of climate change and poverty. In collaboration with leaders in government, NGOs, the private sector, and climate and social scientists around the world, K-CAI will design, pilot, evaluate, and scale technological and policy innovations that mitigate carbon emissions, reduce pollution, and help low-income communities adapt to climate change and access affordable energy. Read more »
Now online: J-PAL’s newly updated research resources
Last month, we launched our completely redesigned and expanded library of research resources. Based on J-PAL’s extensive experience in implementing field research, our virtual handbook provides practical guidance on conducting randomized evaluations from start to finish. With over 300 pages of material, J‑PAL’s research resources offer something for everyone, from those new to randomized evaluations to research assistants and graduate students in economics and policy programs. Read more »
Morocco Employment Lab: A new joint partnership
J-PAL and Evidence for Policy Design at Harvard are partnering with the Millennium Challenge Account Morocco to establish the Morocco Employment Lab. The Lab is designed to strengthen Morocco’s existing labor market programs and improve the effectiveness of future programs and policies. It seeks to create a culture of evidence-informed policymaking through rigorous impact evaluations and capacity building. Read more »
EVIDENCE-INFORMED DECISION MAKING
Improving Mexican labor courts through information and mediation
Labor courts in Mexico are often overburdened, and workers typically lack the necessary information to make decisions related to their cases. J-PAL affiliated researchers Enrique Seira (Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México) and Christopher Woodruff (Oxford), along with co-author Joyce Sadka, partnered with the Mexico City Labor Court to evaluate programs that provided customized information and mediation services to workers. They found that the programs increased settlement rates and led to higher-valued payouts for workers.
Informed by the results of the evaluation, the Government of Mexico passed a reform to the national labor law in 2019. Researchers are now partnering with the court system to identify innovative solutions that streamline access to justice in the wake of COVID‑19. Read more »
Featured Publication
Encouraging inter-ethnic cohesion in schools in Turkey
Social exclusion and in-school violence are key concerns for Turkey as it seeks to improve access to education for more than one million Syrian refugee children. J‑PAL affiliated researcher Sule Alan (European University Institute) and co-authors found that a program encouraging students to consider one another’s perspectives lowered peer violence, improved relationships between refugee and Turkish students, and increased prosocial behaviors like trust, cooperation, and altruism. Read more »
Featured Insight
Providing information to students and parents to improve learning outcomes
With many students transitioning to online learning because of COVID-19, parents may be taking a more active role in their children’s education. A review of 23 randomized evaluations showed that providing relevant information to parents and students on their educational performance and options was a low-cost way to increase parental engagement, student effort, and learning outcomes. However, information provision did not improve learning levels if a lack of information was not the main barrier to learning. Read more »
Upcoming Webinars
Ongoing series: Strengthening safety nets and health care during COVID-19
The Cash Transfers for Child Health (CaTCH) Initiative at J-PAL South Asia is hosting an ongoing webinar series featuring evidence from CaTCH-funded research. The next session on August 13 will focus on how COVID-19 is changing the environment in which community health workers operate and potential policy levers to improve their performance. Learn more and register »
September 9: Inter-state migration in India in the time of COVID-19
As COVID-19 has forced millions of migrant workers to return to their home states in India, policymakers and researchers face uncertainty around how to stabilize local labor markets. Tune in on September 9 as J-PAL affiliated researcher Clément Imbert (University of Warwick) discusses the challenges and opportunities emerging from inter-state migration due to the pandemic. Learn more and register »
Upcoming Courses and Trainings
Enroll now in J-PAL 101x: Evaluating Social Programs
Enroll in J-PAL’s online Evaluating Social Programs course before August 14. This is a free, self-paced course to learn how to use randomized evaluations to rigorously measure the impact of social programs. Through lectures from MIT faculty and J‑PAL affiliated professors, along with case studies of real randomized evaluations, participants will cover topics ranging from how to effectively measure outcomes and choose an appropriate sample size, to common threats to analysis. Learn more »
September 7: MicroMasters’ fall semester begins
The next semester of our online Master’s in Data, Economics, and Development Policy (DEDP) begins September 7. Through a series of five online courses and in-person exams, learners will gain a strong foundation in microeconomics, development economics, and probability and statistics, while engaging with cutting-edge field research. Students who complete the full DEDP credential are eligible to apply for the Master's program in DEDP at MIT. Learn more and register »
MEDIA HIGHLIGHTS
Investing in evaluation capacity development in India: Why it matters now more than ever (Opinion)
World Bank IEG Blog
Subsidies, weather, and financial education promote agricultural insurance adoption
Phys
India coronavirus: Videos by Nobel laureate help fight pandemic
BBC News
Learners today, leaders tomorrow
MIT News
Mayor de Blasio, bring back summer jobs (Opinion)
New York Times
NEW RESEARCH PAPERS
Seasonal Poverty and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Corey Vernot
Data and Policy Decisions: Experimental Evidence from Pakistan
Michael Callen, Saad Gulzar, Ali Hasanain, Muhammad Yasir Khan, Arman Rezaee
Does Information Change Attitudes toward Immigrants?
Alexis Grigorieff, Christopher Roth, Diego Ubfal
The Gender Gap in Self-Promotion
Christine Exley, Judd Kessler