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Browse news articles about J-PAL and our affiliated professors, and read our press releases and monthly global and research newsletters. For media inquiries, please email us.

‘Taxpayers are leaving millions of dollars off their returns.’ Why Americans repeatedly overlook this lucrative tax credit

The Earned Income Tax Credit is designed to act as a cash infusion to low-income families. In fact, some experts have called it “one of the largest and most studied antipoverty programs in the United States.” The results reinforce past research on lagging claim rates for a program that was started...

California has a tax credit that many are missing out on. Here’s what you can do to collect it

The California Policy Lab released a report this week outlining the results of a two-year study where government agencies and a nonprofit reached out to more than one million low-income residents about how and where to file tax returns. The report stated that the effort was unsuccessful in getting...

'Hotspotting' patients with extensive needs fails to reduce hospital readmissions

As a method for reducing health costs and improving care for people with complex medical problems, an early effort at "hotspotting" patients to get extra attention has turned out to be not so hot. Researchers, including J-PAL affiliate Amy Finkelstein, looked at so-called "superutilizer" patients...

These Patients are Hard to Treat

A study examined a popular approach that coordinated care for the most expensive patients, and found that the project did not reduce hospital admissions