Blog

News

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

Two women wearing uniforms talking to each other

#DayoftheGirlChild: Preventing the surge in teenage pregnancies due to COVID-19

In this blog, we highlight key interventions that policymakers and practitioners may wish to consider to urgently reduce child marriages and teenage pregnancies in light of the pandemic.
Individual switching business sign to 'open'

How to use data for everyday decisions in a pandemic

To help us make safe, intelligent decisions for how to conduct our everyday lives during the pandemic, we need new data-driven tools to assess risk based on our unique personal profiles and local conditions.
The photo depicts a close-up shot of a man distributing medication into the hands of a woman wearing a sari.

Connecting the dots from detection to cure

If governments don’t have a good picture of the health care needs of their citizens, how can they begin to address them effectively and efficiently? Governments around the world are all too familiar with this paradox, which can be particularly challenging if administrative data on health care...
Women stand in line waiting to cast their vote at a polling station in in Barpeta, Assam, India.

Can information lead to better voting decisions? Evidence from information campaigns in India

Out of 539 winners in India’s 2019 general election for the lower house of Parliament, 29 percent have, at some point, been charged with serious criminal cases, including cases related to rape, murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping, and crimes against women. Why do voters elect criminal politicians...
Two men sit on the ground looking at paper surveys

Voices from the field: Enumerator spotlight

J-PAL affiliates have now conducted over 1,000 randomized evaluations in 84 countries, scaling up a Nobel Prize-winning approach to poverty alleviation research. To celebrate this milestone, we’re highlighting the people who have facilitated this research throughout the years.
Two girls are pictured sitting side by side.

Measuring social attitudes and norms in impact evaluations: Examples from India

Social norms also often persist despite economic growth, and can negatively impact development outcomes. Evaluating the impact of interventions targeting social norms can be useful to understand how they might be changed.
Children sit on the ground, playing on tablets

Affiliate Spotlight: Karthik Muralidharan

Karthik Muralidharan is the Tata Chancellor’s Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego and also serves as a J-PAL Board member and co-chair of the Education sector. A pioneering researcher in education and service delivery, Karthik has profoundly influenced social service...

Tanya Sethi, J-PAL ’14, is tackling the big questions in aid and policy

By
Tanya joined J-PAL South Asia’s policy team after receiving a master’s degree in public policy from the Paris School of Economics. At J-PAL South Asia, she played a key role in an early partnership with the Government of Tamil Nadu and helped lay the conceptual groundwork for important program scale...