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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.

The Impact of Candidates’ Political Connections on Voters' Expressed Support in Pakistan

Ali Cheema
Asad Liaqat
Farooq Naseer
Jacob N. Shapiro
Researchers evaluated the impact of randomly varied information about candidates’ political connections on voters' beliefs and self-expressed support in the context of a 2015 local election in Sargodha, a district in rural Pakistan. Providing information on candidates’ connectedness increased voters...

The Impact of Government-run Remedial Education Programs on Student Learning in Ghana

Annie Duflo
Jessica Kiessel
Building on previous research, researchers in this study evaluated the impact of several targeted instruction programs on the learning outcomes of primary school students in Ghana’s public schools. Researchers found significant improvements in numeracy and literacy on average; of the four...

Characterizing Firm-Level Discrimination in the United States

Researchers studied hiring discrimination among major employers in the United States by sending fictional resumes, with varying demographic information, to determine whether certain characteristics would lead to different follow-up contact rates. Employers were less likely to contact resumes with...

Increasing Financial Aspirations to Improve Financial Decision-Making and Outcomes in the Philippines

David McKenzie
Aakash Mohpal
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test whether encouraging entrepreneurs to raise their aspirations helped them improve their financial decisions and outcomes. The aspirations training led individuals to set higher savings goals, but most participants failed to achieve their goals.

Teacher Incentives Based on Students' Test Scores in Kenya

In partnership with International Child Support, researchers designed and evaluated an incentives program that provided salary bonuses to teachers in Kenya based on the performance of their school as a whole on annual district exams. While results show that the incentives program led to an increase...

Combining Microcredit with Health Education in Benin

Bobbi Gray
Bram Thuysbaert
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation of a bundled microcredit and health education program, delivered both to mixed-gender and female-only loan groups in Benin, to evaluate its impacts on health knowledge, health behaviors, and social outcomes. The integrated package of group microcredit...

How to Teach English: Testing Two Method of Instruction in India

Fang He
Margaret McLeod
Researchers partnered with the Indian NGO Pratham to evaluate whether different technologies and implementation methods can increase students’ English test scores. Overall, the interventions were effective at increasing students’ knowledge of English.