The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)
Evaluation
Do government audits reduce corruption?
Billions of dollars in government funds go missing each year due to corruption, but there is limited consensus on how best to tackle this global challenge. Researchers leveraged data from Brazil’s long-standing anticorruption program, which holds public lotteries to randomly select municipalities for audit. These government audits, aimed at uncovering the misuse of public resources, reduced corruption by promoting both electoral and judicial accountability.
Event
Apply by April 15 to attend Evaluating Social Programs
Held June 11-15 in the United States, this course gives participants a thorough understanding of why and when researchers and policymakers might choose to conduct randomized evaluations and how randomized evaluations are designed in real-world settings.
Publication
Stopping a Bullet with a Summer Job
Summer youth employment programs that provided minimum wage summer jobs to mainly disadvantaged youth in New York City and Chicago reduced arrests for violent crimes, incarceration, and premature deaths.
Blog
Teaching at the Right Level: Inside the classroom
Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) is an evidence-based education intervention that targets teaching to the basic skill level of the child. TaRL pioneer Pratham, together with J-PAL Africa, worked closely with the Ministry of General Education in Zambia to produce a set of videos that transport the viewer into a classroom implementing the approach.
902 ongoing and completed randomized evaluations in 79 countries
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New video - @GiveWell co-founder Elie Hassenfeld on...
1 day 21 hours agoLogin name: JPAL_Global
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New: Six rules of thumb for determining RCT sample size and statistical power, from @JPAL_NA: https://t.co/xUaYxaT8V8 (PDF)
2 days 16 hours agoLogin name: JPAL_Global
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Can summer jobs for youth help reduce crime? See research from Chicago and NYC: https://t.co/QgnkFmpBko @JPAL_NA
2 days 19 hours agoLogin name: JPAL_Global
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RT @EPoDHarvard: Rohini Pande & @...
3 days 17 hours agoLogin name: JPAL_Global
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We're hiring a Policy and Research Associate to work with our Executive Director at our Global office in Boston. Kn… https://t.co/x7HJROCOIA
3 days 17 hours agoLogin name: JPAL_Global
- We're hiring a Policy and Research Associate to work with our Executive Director at our Global office in Boston. Know any talented recent grads? Please share! More info at j-p.al/2voy8OZ. 3 days 17 hours ago.
- Are you designing or implementing a youth employment program in Latin America? Learn how to use impact evaluations to test and improve program effectiveness in our new Spanish-language incubator course in Santiago: https://j-p.al/2v8L6Aw. 1 week 1 day ago.
- Ed tech competition, research on summer jobs and crime, and more. Catch up on the latest J-PAL newsletter: j-p.al/2HgyGcg 2 weeks 1 day ago.
- Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) shared their live video. Starting now: GiveWell's Elie Hassenfeld on making donor dollars count - watch via Facebook Live below! 2 weeks 3 days ago.
- Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) was live. Making Donor Dollars Count: GiveWell's Approach to Selecting Charities: As a nonprofit that conducts in-depth research to determine how much good a given program accomplishes (e.g. lives improved) per dollar spent, GiveWell is dedicated to identifying outstanding giving opportunities and publishing the full details of their analysis to help donors decide where to give. 2 weeks 3 days ago.
Four researchers recently joined J-PAL’s academic network: David Deming at Harvard University, Stefan Dercon at University of Oxford, Namrata Kala at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Patrizio Piraino at the University of Cape Town. Their varied research interests include technologies that help people adapt to environmental change, the determinants of socioeconomic disadvantage, and how to finance responses to natural disasters.
2 weeks 5 days ago
Implementing randomized evaluations and evidence-based policy often involves a culture shift—from fear of failure to embrace of learning, from program-centric to person-centric, and from services-...
1 month 2 weeks ago
“Do you agree with the statement, “Men are better suited than women to work outside the home”?” Seema asked parents in India this question as part of a research study to understand how a school-based program designed to change attitudes about gender roles could help reduce gender bias in Haryana, India. According to recent World Bank estimates, only 27 percent of women in India currently participate in the labor force—a steep ten percentage point decrease from 2005 rates. This large decrease is notable because, according to analysis by J-PAL affiliate Rohini Pande (Harvard) and Charity Troyer Moore, about one-third of women who work primarily in housework would like to have a job but seem to be prevented by traditional gender norms that restrict women’s mobility.
1 month 2 weeks ago
Christopher Neilson is an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University. He has been a J-PAL affiliate since 2017. How did you become interested in development economics? I moved around a lot when I was growing up; I spent time in Chile, Brazil, and the United States. These experiences exposed me to contrasts in development—both across countries, and as well as within countries—and these disparities left a mark. The consequences of ineffective economic policy were very visible. For example, when I was 9 or 10, I remember negotiating my allowance to be in US dollars when my family briefly lived in Brazil during a period of hyperinflation.
1 month 2 weeks ago
Community Jameel was formally established in 2003 to continue the Jameel family's tradition of supporting the community. Its long-standing...
1 month 3 weeks ago