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

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Partnering with Spain’s government to build a more inclusive job market

Cash transfers such as minimum incomes, grants, universal basic incomes or food stamps, are a common tool to alleviate poverty. Working with governments, J-PAL researchers are exploring whether combining these transfers with additional resources can help people make better use of cash assistance and...
Adeyemi Dipeolu, Mark Malloch-Brown, and Alexia Latortue speak at the Growth Summit in Rabat, Morocco.

Africa’s jobs problem is a market access problem

One common way that governments and development funders try to promote business growth and job creation is to help businesses produce more, including by giving them credit and training. This can be useful, but only a little and for some. Why? Part of the answer is because most firms are not just...
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What we heard—and learned—at the India AI Impact Summit

Our team had a whirlwind week at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 last month, the largest annual global gathering on AI. We hosted an official, day-long seminar: AI for Social Good: Impact that Works. We shared how measuring real-world impact is essential to realizing AI’s potential while avoiding...
A group of J-PAL LAC staff and trainees pose in a group on grass

J-PAL LAC’s government partnerships: Córdoba and the path toward a culture of evidence use

By
Integrating evidence into public sector decision-making is a practical challenge. It requires technical capacity, usable data, and management routines that make it possible to prioritize, learn, and adjust policies in a sustained way. In this context, the Ministry of Economy and Public Management of...
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African Scholar Spotlight: Nathaniel Olutegbe

Through our African Scholars Program, we hope to help create more opportunities for African researchers to advance the research agenda on the continent through randomized evaluations. In this spotlight, we speak with Nathaniel Olutegbe of the University of Ibadan in Nigeria.
SALDRU newsletter

Six years of the African Scholars Program: Advancing experimental research capacity across Africa

Through the African Scholars Program, J-PAL Africa is creating more opportunities for African researchers to advance the research agenda on the continent through randomized evaluations.
A group of people working on Pursuit projects

Randomization’s capacity for flexibility: How to build randomization into a competitive, multi-step application process

This post discusses an evaluation design by researchers at J-PAL North America and Pursuit to measure the impact of the Pursuit's sectoral employment program, showing how randomization can be integrated into the application process without compromising enrollment preferences.
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An AI evaluation framework for the development sector

By
  • Farhan Abrol
  • Han Sheng Chia
  • Temina Madon
  • Robert On
  • James Walsh
  • Zezhen Wu
This is the first blog post in a series designed to help implementers, policymakers, and funders unpack the different types of evaluations relevant for “AI for Good” applications. Stay tuned for forthcoming posts providing a deeper dive on each of the evaluation levels.