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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 Role of Incentives in the Distribution of Public Goods in Zambia

In Lusaka, Zambia, researchers compared the effect of financial and non-financial reward schemes on sales of female condoms. They found that non-financial incentives were more effective than financial rewards at motivating hair stylists to sell female condoms to their customers.

Improving Third-Party Audits and Regulatory Compliance in India

Researchers evaluated the impact of a reform to the pollution audit system in India, making auditors more independent, on the truthfulness of their reporting and the behavior of the firms they audited. Increasing their independence made them more likely to report the truth about industrial plants’...

Responses to Degree of Control over Remittances in El Salvador

Researchers partnered with Banco Agrícola to conduct a randomized evaluation that offered a way for Salvadoran migrants to directly channel some fraction of their remittances into savings accounts in El Salvador. Results indicate that a desire for control over remittance uses—in particular the...

Reducing Barriers to Savings in Rural Malawi

Lasse Brune
Xavier Giné
Researchers analyzed the effect of reducing barriers to saving in rural Malawi on savings behavior, investment in agricultural inputs, and consumption. They found that farmers with access to formal savings accounts preserved greater amounts of savings throughout both the harvest and planting seasons...

Recruiting and Motivating Community Health Workers in Zambia

The Government of Zambia partnered with researchers to test the effect of two different recruitment strategies for a newly created healthcare position, the Community Health Assistant (CHA). One strategy emphasized career opportunities and the other emphasized the contributions one could make in the...

Conditional Cash Transfers in Honduras

Researchers analyzed the effects of a small conditional cash transfer for education in Honduras on school enrollment and child labor.

Group Lending versus Individual Lending in Mongolia

Britta Augsburg
Emla Fitzsimons
Ralph De Haas
Heike Harmgart
Researchers compared the impacts of providing group- or individual-liability loans to women in rural Mongolia. Access to group loans increased business ownership and food consumption among poor women, while individual loans had no effect on these outcomes.