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Browse news articles about J-PAL and our affiliated professors, and read our press releases and monthly global and research newsletters. For media inquiries, please email us.

Protecting Agricultural Households Against Floods Through Flexible Microfinance in Bangladesh

Floods are an extremely destructive and increasingly common threat to rural agricultural households in countries without strong social safety nets. Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to study the welfare impacts of a new microcredit product which guarantees credit access to agricultural...

Leveraging Local Governments to Support Rice Mechanization in India

Working with local government leaders and agricultural extension agents, the researcher is conducting a randomized evaluation to test the impact of promoting a mechanization technology. Uniquely, the researcher will closely track how employment shifts for women who formerly did the mechanized work.

Welfare Impacts of Micro-Loans in Nigeria

In Nigeria, researchers worked with a financial service provider to evaluate the impact of digital loans on welfare. Being approved for the loans increased subjective well-being after three months, for applicants who normally would have been denied.

Business Education for Microcredit Clients in Peru

Researchers worked in Peru to measure the marginal impact of adding business training to a group lending program. The results of this study found business training slightly improved business practices, but had no impact on key business outcomes such as revenue and profit.

Emergency Savings Accounts for Remittance Receivers in Mexico

Researchers partnered with CNS to investigate whether requiring clients to sign a non-binding agreement to save a predetermined amount of each remittance received could increase saving.

Effectively Targeting Anti-Poverty Programs in Indonesia

Vivi Alatas
Julia Tobias
Researchers in Indonesia compared the effectiveness of two methods of identifying the low-income households: a community method where villagers ranked households according to perceived wealth, and a proxy-means test which relied on measures of consumption and assets. The community methods of...

Text Message Reminders and Incentives to Save in Bolivia

Researchers evaluated the effectiveness of sending text message reminders to clients holding programmed savings accounts.