Evaluations

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EvaluationsPolicy Publications

Search our database of 987 randomized evaluations conducted by our affiliates in 84 countries. To browse summaries of key policy recommendations from a subset of these evaluations, visit the Policy Publications tab.
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  • Woman using a tablet.

    Finance

    Eliminating Behavioral Barriers to Saving through a Tablet App for the Base of the Pyramid in Paraguay

    Jeanne Lafortune , Jose Tessada, Liliana Olarte, Viviane Azevedo

    Despite the benefits of accumulating savings, low-income individuals rarely use formal savings products. Researchers are partnering with a financial institution in Paraguay to evaluate the impact of a range of tablet-based applications, which remind people to save and help them make savings goals, on savings behavior of low-income individuals.

  • Résumés were randomly assigned black- or white-sounding names. Researchers examined the impact of the name on callbacks.

    Labor Markets

    Discrimination in the Job Market in the United States

    Marianne Bertrand, Sendhil Mullainathan

    Researchers examined the level of racial discrimination in the United States labor market by randomly assigning identical résumés black-sounding or white-sounding names and observing the impact on requests for interviews from employers. Results found that résumés with white-sounding names received 50 percent more callbacks than those with black-sounding names, indicating that, all other things being equal, considerable racial discrimination exists in the American labor market.

  • Female street vendor in Managua, Nicaragua

    Finance, Health

    Extending Health Insurance to the Informal Sector Through Microfinance in Nicaragua

    Erica Field, Rebecca Thornton , Laurel Hatt, Mursaleena Islam, Freddy Solis Diaz, Martha Gonzalez Monada, Anne Fitzpatrick

    This evaluation measured the determinants of insurance enrollment as well as the impacts of having insurance for informal sector workers by randomly varying the costs and convenience of signing up for a government health insurance program available to formal and informal sector workers in Nicaragua. Overall, take-up of the insurance and retention rates were low, and enrolling in the program did not provide an absolute cost savings for participants.

  • Crowd of women in bright saris watch man hold up token from cardboard box

    Political Economy & Governance

    Does Development Aid Undermine Political Accountability in Bangladesh?

    Mushfiq Mobarak , Raymond Guiteras

    There is little evidence to lend credence to or discredit the argument that development aid undermines political accountability. In Tanore district of Bangladesh, researchers tested the impact of providing external subsidies for sanitation projects on the behavior of local leaders and, subsequently, on constituents’ perception of their performance. They found that while constituents credited leaders for the sanitation program when the funding source was unknown, they did not credit local leaders when funding information was made transparent.

91 Results
Two men with cart pulled by donkey

Agriculture, Finance

Finding Missing Markets: An Agricultural Brokerage Intervention in Kenya

Dean Karlan, Nava Ashraf , Xavier Giné

Smallholder Kenyan farmers export more crops with credit and coordination services, but incomes do not significantly improve.

Agriculture

Rates of Return to Fertilizer: Evidence from Field Experiments in Kenya

Esther Duflo, Jonathan Robinson, Michael Kremer

Researchers in Kenya collaborated with the NGO International Child Support to measure the returns to different types of fertilizer among local farmers. While results show that all interventions led to increases in yield, rate-of-return calculations indicate that not all were profitable for the average farmer.

A man is looking out over the land in Kenya.

Agriculture, Finance

Nudging Farmers to Use Fertilizer: Experimental Evidence from Kenya

Esther Duflo, Jonathan Robinson, Michael Kremer

Complex implementation and information gaps explain why farmers do not use theoretically profitable fertilizers in Kenya.

Agriculture

Farmer Decision-Making and Technology Experimentation in Indonesia

Rema Hanna, Sendhil Mullainathan , Joshua Schwartzstein

Providing farmers with data on previously unnoticed factors affecting their crop yields can help them adopt optimal agricultural practices.

Agriculture, Finance

Demand for Rainfall Insurance in India

Shawn Cole , Daniel Stein, Xavier Gine, Jeremy Tobacman, Petia Topalova, Robert Townsend, James Vickery

In the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, researchers tested how demand for weather insurance responded to different marketing schemes and price discounts. They found that demand was very price sensitive, but that poor understanding of the product, distrust of insurance agents, and liquidity constraints also limited take-up.

Agriculture, Finance

Futures Prices and Risk Hedging in Gujarat, India

David Yanagizawa-Drott, Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Shawn Cole , Jeremy Tobacman, Stefan Hunt

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to measure the impact of a crop price awareness program on reducing price uncertainty and promoting forward-looking planting decisions among farmers in India.

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