J-PAL Global is our head office and coordinates J-PAL’s worldwide research, policy, education, and capacity building work to promote our mission of ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence.

We provide research and policy expertise in each of J-PAL’s eleven sectors: Agriculture; Crime, Violence, and Conflict; Education; Environment, Energy, and Climate Change; Finance; Firms; Gender; Health; Labor Markets; Political Economy and Governance, and Social Protection. This includes publishing evidence summaries and policy insights, and building partnerships to help policymakers understand how and when to apply evidence from randomized evaluations to policies and programs.

We create research resources to help design and implement randomized evaluations and to promote research transparency. We manage funding initiatives that support new and innovative evaluations in agricultural technology adoption, crime and violence, governance, government innovation, and post-primary education, among other topics.

We also lead executive trainings and university-level online courses, including the MicroMasters® Program in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy (DEDP), that help build the capacity of researchers who produce evidence, policymakers and donors who use it, and advocates of evidence-informed policy.

J-PAL Global assists our Board of Directors and the Board’s Executive Committee in designing the strategy and policies that guide our operations worldwide. Our research, policy and communications, education, and training teams support the work of our seven regional offices at leading universities in Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, North America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.

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Blog

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...

Tropical deforestation remote sensing satellite image
Policy Insight

Cash for conservation: Climate action on a budget

Payments for Ecosystem Services can protect nature, reduce carbon emissions, and decrease local pollution at a low cost. But success depends on getting the scheme right—changing key aspects of program design can make them even more cost-effective.

Three people, WFP Director of Evaluation, Anne-Claire Luzot, J-PAL co-founder and Nobel Laureate in Economics, Prof Abhijit Banerjee and WFP Assistant Executive Director for Partnerships and Resource Mobilization, Rania Dagash-Kamara pose in front of blue United Nations flags.
Blog

Humanitarian impact evaluations: WFP and J-PAL build commitment for a common cause

In recent years, RCTs and other rigorous impact evaluations have gained momentum in contexts previously believed to be unnecessary in urgent crises, or even unethical or impossible in resource-constrained environments that can change overnight. In this blog, we explore how we can keep momentum going...

A tree with visible roots grows in a dense forest.
Blog

The King Climate Action Initiative: Five years of growing impact

As rising temperatures threaten to reverse gains in the fight against poverty, communities on the frontlines need solutions that work. Since 2020, J-PAL's King Climate Action Initiative has funded research has informed policies and programs improving the lives of nearly 33 million people.