About J-PAL Europe

J-PAL Europe, based at the Paris School of Economics, leads J-PAL’s work in Europe. J-PAL Europe conducts randomised evaluations, builds partnerships for evidence-informed policymaking, and helps partners scale up effective programmes.

With a network of affiliated professors based across Europe and beyond, we partner with governments and civil society actors to conduct rigorous impact evaluations of social programmes in Europe. We also work with J-PAL offices around the globe to help inform the work of European development actors.

Policy

A dedicated policy team works to distill and disseminate the main lessons and policy implications from completed research to help bring evidence to bear upon Europe’s most pressing social issues, including issues pertaining to social inclusion, climate action, and humanitarian effectiveness. Our core policy activities include synthesising and sharing findings from existing research and working with decision makers across the continent to identify evaluation questions and launch new research as well as help partners consider the generalisability of study findings and apply lessons to new settings.

Capacity Building

Our training team organises online courses, trainings, and customised workshops for policymakers and programme implementers on the use of randomised evaluations, and also contributes to building the capacity of local researchers across Europe. To discuss customised trainings, please contact Ilf Bencheikh.

Research

Our research spans many sectors, with a focus on education, labour, and issues related to migration. In education, our research explores how European governments and NGOs can work to improve access to and provide delivery of high-quality education. This includes a series of evaluations showing the effectiveness of parental involvement in promoting children’s success in school, which led to a decision by the French Ministry of Education to expand the program to all public schools in the country. A recent series of evaluations run in partnership with the Turkish Ministry of Education to improve non-cognitive skills have also contributed to a Ministry decision to launch a similar program in primary and post-primary schools.

Our work on labor market and related interventions evaluates what works to get Europe’s unemployed back into the workforce, to ease young people’s transitions into the working world, and provide the skills entrepreneurs need to succeed. Some examples of past work include measuring the impact of an intensive career-counseling program and of anonymous CVs in France, a series of studies on labor market programs in Denmark, and examining the effect of offering access to credit to under-qualified microcredit applicants in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Featured areas of work

European Social Inclusion Initiative

The European Social Inclusion Initiative (ESII) is a research and policy initiative that aims to answer some of the most pressing questions in Europe today related to social inclusion. To address the many forms of social exclusion in Europe, ESII focuses on programmes and policies related to health, housing, education and labour.

Contact: Maria Aranzazu Rodriguez Uribe

Humanitarian Effectiveness Research

We are currently developing a long-term research effort aiming to identify evidence-backed models to improve the effectiveness of humanitarian operations. Click here to learn more.

Contact: Theresa Stienen

Innovation, Data and Experiments in Education (IDEE)

The Innovation, Data and Experiments in Education (IDEE) initiative is a long-term investment aimed at developing the infrastructure for experimental research in education in France. In that endeavor, IDEE will facilitate researchers' access to administrative data, provide research resources and measurement tools, and structure partnerships with policy-makers and practitioners. Strategic partners include the French Ministry of Education and six leading research institutions.

Contact: Adrien Pawlik

Generating Evidence for Climate Action in Europe

To identify scalable policy solutions to climate change, we are seeking implementing partners—such as governments, NGOs, multilateral organisations, and businesses—working in the areas of mitigation or pollution reduction in Europe who are interested in either measuring the impact of their programmes or scaling-up proven effective innovations. Click here to learn more about how to get involved.

Contact: Michael Braun