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News, ideas, and analysis from J-PAL staff and affiliated professors. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive monthly email updates.

Translating global evidence on violence prevention to the Mexican context

Friday, November 2, 2018, by Isabel Mejía Fontanot and Max Mendez-Beck

The Latin America region suffers disproportionately from criminal violence. According to the Igarapé Institute’s Homicide Monitor, 16 out of the 20 countries with the highest homicide rates worldwide are located in the region. This includes Mexico, which has one of the highest homicide counts in the world—recording over 30,000 murders in 2017.

While much of this violence has been attributed to the rise of organized crime... Read More

Affiliate Spotlight: Craig McIntosh on engines for economic mobility

Tuesday, October 2, 2018, by Hanna Juergens and Craig McIntosh

Craig McIntosh is a professor of economics in the international relations school at the University of California, San Diego and Co-Chair of J-PAL’s Agriculture sector. He has been a J-PAL affiliate since 2013.

How did you become interested in development economics?

I was a high school exchange student in Nakuru, Kenya for a year in the late eighties. Every one of my brothers, uncles, and cousins in my... Read More

Developing an ed-tech agenda in Latin America

Monday, September 24, 2018, by Ana Carolina Mendoza

Technology is increasingly opening up new and promising opportunities to improve educational achievement in schools. Governments in Latin America are investing significant resources to adopt education technologies, or ed tech, with the promise of improving learning outcomes. Some of these investments are not evidence-based and risk wasting public resources with ineffective approaches. Despite this, there is strong demand among some actors for data and evidence.

At J-PAL Latin America & the Caribbean... Read More

How to keep youth away from crime?

Wednesday, August 22, 2018, by Claudio Ferraz

This post was first published as an op-ed in Nexo Jornal and has been translated from the original Portuguese.

Quantitative studies conducted in the U.S. and Brazil show investments in education and job opportunity creation can act as methods for decreasing violence.

In 2017, Brazil witnessed the highest number of violent deaths in the world—approximately 60,000 people were killed. More people have died violently in Brazil in... Read More

We need evidence-based public policies in Brazil

Monday, July 16, 2018, by Claudio Ferraz

This post was first published as an op-ed in Nexo Jornal and has been translated from the original Portuguese.

The main challenge when it comes to public policy is knowing what works and why. Brazilian policy debate too often is built on belief-based arguments and ideology and relies little on data or rigorous evidence.

The adoption of policies based on empirical evidence is growing worldwide. Unfortunately, Brazil still... Read More

Affiliate spotlight: Christopher Neilson on using technology to close information gaps

Monday, March 5, 2018, by Charlotte Goff and Christopher Neilson

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. Read More

What have we learned about building a culture of data and evidence use in government?

Monday, February 5, 2018, by Samantha Carter, Julu Beth Katticaran, Claudia Macías, and Claire Walsh

Earlier this month, we wrote about how partnerships funded by J-PAL’s Government Partnership Initiative (GPI) have helped increase governments’ use of data and evidence in policymaking in places like Chile, India, Peru, and Zambia.

One common theme across all of GPI’s partnerships is that they are led by a champion in government who is making evidence-informed policy a priority. We could not contribute data and evidence to policy decisions without their leadership and dedication. Read More

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