Examining some bad habits about charity giving might help make sure our dollars go farther this giving season.

The work of J-PAL and IPA has shown that some interventions meant to reduce extreme poverty are extremely effective, while others have disappointing results.

Rigorous ways to evaluate whether programs are working exist, but too often aren't employed. 

J-PAL Director Abhijit Banerjee explains why we need a world where less ingenuity is necessary to survive.

Recent research by the Rajasthan police, in collaboration with J-PAL at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proves the benefits of dedicated police teams for traffic law enforcement on highways.

An editorial piece in the Boston Globe hails J-PAL's contributions to anti-poverty efforts.

Teaching at the Right Level | Improving Early Grade Reading in India through the Use of Evidence 

J-PAL Affiliate Marco Gonzalez-Navarro discusses his recent study in Mexico and how paving streets can have a measurable effect on reducing urban poverty.

Abhijit Banerjee argues that, even in Europe, understanding the problems of those in poverty is important to design effective policies.

Results from an experiment in Ghana reveal that rainfall insurance leads to significantly larger agricultural investment and riskier production choices by farmers.

J-PAL Affiliate Dean Yang discusses how fingerprinting can help encourage borrowers to repay their loans.

Video: J-PAL Affiliate Dean Karlan is interviewed about his research in behavioral economics and his ideas to end global poverty. 

Does providing households with training and capital to diversify income cushion shocks from severe weather?

J-PAL affiliate Dean Karlan tells of projects evaluated in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Honduras and India that have showed an impact on the livelihoods of the poorest that were targeted.

Mushfiq Mobarak discusses how social engineering can be the chief factor of an intervention's success.

J-PAL is at the forefront of a movement promoting the wider use of randomized evaluations, akin to those used in medicine, in the development of social policy.

J-PAL co-founder and director Abhijit Banerjee appointed to high-level UN panel on post-2015 development goals.

Rethinking Clean Cookstoves | Registration Open for Impact and Policy Conference

Initiatives such as MFIs work well when poor people get a sense of hope, says J-PAL Director Esther Duflo.

The suffering associated with poverty is sometimes caused not only by low incomes but also by self-destructive pathologies; J-PAL Director Esther Duflo argues that outside interventions sometimes work partly when they give poor people hope. 

At an event focused on methods to provide low-cost, quality education for the poor of Pakistan, J-PAL Affiliate Asim Khwaja gave a key presentation entitled ‘Investing in the Education Market: Strengthening Private Schools for the Poor.’

Pollution from traditional cookstoves leads to millions of deaths in developing countries, but few people buy safer stoves because models aren’t designed to give people what they want, researchers say.

Indoor air pollution is an avoidable scourge and one discouraging study should not set the world back in the effort to eradicate it.

Vision UC, the newsletter of the Catholic University of Chile, talked with Ryan Cooper, J-PAL LAC executive director, and Francisco Gallego, J-PAL LAC scientific director, about the work that J-PAL LAC is doing in the region. Cooper and Gallego explained the experimental methodology used by J-PAL by using as example an evaluation carried out in Chile which sought to determine whether education quality is affected if parents are given information about the schools in their neighborhoods. 

Most people, regardless of age or socioeconomic status, find achieving financial goals for themselves and their families challenging and often don’t save as much as they’d like. These features are examples of commitment devices, or ways to help overcome competition from short-term demands on an individual’s long-term preferences (e.g. retirement savings).

The prospect of long-term joblessness in Europe and the US should focus attention on a new type of economics that seems to work for helping the worst-off in poor countries.

Launch of J-PAL South Asia Newsletter | 20 Million Children Dewormed in Bihar and Delhi

After receiving the Shera’s Shera at the STAR Ananda Shera Bangali Awards 2012, Abhijit Banerjee sat down with the Telegraph for an interview.

The purpose of randomized control trials is not to debunk the idea of helping poor countries. On the contrary, such work bolsters the case for aid by ensuring that dollars are well spent.

The Computer Access Mentorship Program (CAMP) is a step into the future for a program that has successfully served 882 public schools, 24,654 public school teachers, and a little over a million students, as well as distributed almost 204,000 children’s books over the course of 12 years.

It sounds too good to be true: If we could just swap out dirty indoor cooking stoves in the developing world with cleaner versions, we could cut pollution, save lives, and slow climate change. Promising, yes? But, like most things that sound too good to be true, it’s not that easy.

While the initiatives One Laptop Per Child and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves had disappointing results, one only has to look at the success of M-PESA, Kenya's mobile money platform, to appreciate the implications technology can have for development. 

J-PAL Affiliate Edward Miguel is among five Berkeley faculty that are being lauded this week, not only for their particular and highly developed expertise but for their exceptional ability to challenge and engage their students.

Abhijit Banerjee talks to The Guardian about why aid that assumes the poor will do the right thing is misguided, and why political corruption does not necessarily mean economic stagnation.

A J-PAL study shows that a lot more research and experimentation is needed to better understand the barriers of improved cookstove adoption before the roll out of another large-scale cookstove delivery program to reduce indoor air pollution. 

The World Health Organization estimates that indoor air pollution kills 2 million people every year, but a J-PAL study suggests the replacement stoves may not make any difference.

Chlorine dispensers become a simple yet crucial solution to provide clean water in Haiti during a Cholera outbreak. 

This January in Davos, Prime Minister Odinga of Kenya promised to deworm five million children annually until 2017, Bihar is readying for the second round of deworming this May, and Delhi has pledged another deworming day this summer.

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo document in their book “Poor Economics” that when poor households get some extra money to spend, they might not spend it on food or sanitation, but instead splurge on a television set or a lavish wedding celebration.

Abhijit Banerjee discusses development goals for global poverty in a podcast recorded at The Guardian's Open weekend.

Dean Karlan describes how the first wave of randomized controlled trials in microfinance helped figure out the impact on everybody who received the treatment. What has started to come out is a more complex story.

Abhijit Banerjee argues that we need two different poverty lines: an ethical poverty line to describe the standard we should aspire to and an administrative poverty line, which tells us how to best target our limited resources.

Citing research from Dean Karlan and Jonathan Zinman, the article suggests that microlending should be targeted for startup investments and training that can build durable financial institutions.

Development economists, including Abhijit Banerjee and Rohini Pande, write an open letter to the Prime Minister of India proposing a simpler and more effective framework for the National Food Security Bill.

Quality matters as much as quantity in expanding financial services to the poor, suggests a paper from J-PAL Affiliate Pascaline Dupas.

The Global Citizen interviews J-PAL's Director of Policy, Iqbal Dhaliwal, about J-PAL's many challenges and achievements.

The poor aren't less able, they're distracted. Privileged people subjected to the same conditions would also make bad decisions.

Francisco Gallego and Cristobal Marshall - motivated by a recent announcement that the Chilean government will start announcing cases of corruption under investigation - explain the positive impact that the availability of information can have on governance issues.

J-PAL Director Rachel Glennerster explains why proper evaluation of policy is crucial at the the Institute for Government. 

An economist specializing in questions of poverty and development, Esther Duflo invites us to change our perspective on the poorest of the poor, and consider a form of enlightened paternalism.

Despite the efforts of the UN, a large proportion of the world's population remains desperately poor. According to Esther Duflo and Martin Hirsch, it is time to find new weapons to tackle this scourge.

Small loans probably won't lift people out of poverty or empower women. But that doesn't mean they're useless.

When it comes to global poverty, there’s often a gap between the billions we pour in and the outcomes that actually result; Dean Karlan is trying to uncover the reasons behind this gap.

Francisco Gallego, scientific director of J-PAL Latin America, recommends Poor Economics to Chilean readers, highlighting the book's key points and explaining the book's importance in the Chilean context. 

The real influence of the Gates Foundation isn't so much the actual amount of cash that it hands out–though considerable–but that they base philanthropy on the most cost-effective, proven solutions.

While some dismiss the quota system as one that clashes with the ideals of the democratic process, there is evidence that these laws help create female role models, and improve educational and professional opportunities for young women.

Why small increases in price can lead to a steep decline in demand for essential health products.

J-PAL affiliate Sendhil Mullainathan is honored in Wired UK's magazine as one of 50 people who will change the world.

Ryan Cooper, executive director of J-PAL Latin America and the Carribean, and Francisco Gallego, scientific director, discuss the current projects of J-PAL LAC as well as its direction for the future in the region.

An extract from the newly released book "Repenser la pauvreté"
is featured on Les Echos.

A new book, "Repenser la Pauvreté", says that the problems of the poor require careful understanding, if you truly want to help.

The fate of the middle class is a very sensitive subject in France.

In Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee's new book "Repenser la pauvreté", the renowned economists argue that economics can benefit from concrete facts based on field experiments.

A little more concrete could save the world. Separate studies by J-PAL affiliates Paul Gertler and Marco Gonzalez-Navarro reveal the various benefits of concrete.