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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.

The Effect of India's Total Sanitation Campaign on Defecation Behaviors and Child Health

Benjamin Arnhold
Bertha Briceno
Sandipan Ganguly
John M. Colford Jr.
Sumeet R Patil
Alicia L. Salvatore

Peer Group Assignment and Student Achievement in the United States

Researchers evaluated the impact of creating peer groups optimized to improve the academic achievement of lower-ability first-year students at the United States Air Force Academy. Placing lower-ability students in the optimized groups, which mixed them with a relatively large number of peers with...

Delivering Clean Water to Households in India

Fiona Burlig
Amir Jina
More than two billion people around the world lack access to clean drinking water, and current approaches to increasing access have fallen short. Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of delivering clean water directly to households on the valuation of clean water, and...

Motivating Citizens to Seek Political Office in Pakistan

Researchers examined the impact of different types of motivation on the number and quality of candidates running for village councils in Pakistan, electoral outcomes, and elected candidates’ policy alignment with citizens’ interests. They found that portraying politics as socially beneficial–rather...

Books or Laptops? The Cost-Effectiveness of Shifting from Printed to Digital Delivery of Educational Content in Honduras

Rosangela Bando
Dario Romero Fonseca
Researchers partnered with the Honduran government to evaluate the impact of replacing textbooks with laptops on student learning. Using laptops resulted in no change in learning outcomes, suggesting that laptops could be a cost-effective substitute to textbooks if they can replace enough textbooks.