Evaluations

Researchers evaluated and compared the impact of two different job search assistance policies on employment outcomes for young job seekers in Addis Ababa. Helping youth signal their skills to employers improved their earnings and job duration four years later, especially for youth who would usually...

In many countries around the world, there is growing concern that certain groups of people may face job market discrimination based on physical appearance. To test this theory, researchers randomly submitted resumes with photos of people with varying levels of attractiveness to measure the effect on...

Youth living in poor urban areas face a number of psychological and social barriers to finding work. In France, over 40 percent of these youth are unemployed, twice as much the national youth unemployment rate. Researchers partnered with the French Public Employment Services to test the...

Researchers evaluated the effect of randomly offering varied wages to bean-sorting workers in rural Malawi. While offering higher wages caused workers to increase their productivity, it did not attract more productive workers.

Researchers assessed the impact of financial incentives and peer endorsement on mobile banking adoption and formal savings in Ghana. While financial incentives boosted adoption by 50 percent, peer endorsement was twice as effective, leading to sustained mobile banking use and a 30 percent increase...

Supporting women’s empowerment, the ability for women to control their resources and make their own choices, is a common policy goal both as its own outcome and as a vehicle to drive other change like improving children’s health and education. Many empowerment programs have targeted women’s income...

Rapidly rising health care costs in the United States have generated interest in identifying effective ways to improve the quality of care delivery and reduce waste within the health care system. In this study, researchers evaluated the impact of a care management program that provides medical and...

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.