2025

Early Stimulation Intervention to Nurture Parents and Children: Adapting Reach Up and Learn to Indonesian Context

Researchers:
Location:
Indonesia
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
Indonesia has made notable progress in reducing stunting, supported by a $3.9 billion annual investment in nutrition interventions. To further close early childhood developmental gaps, this project adapts and pilots Reach Up and Learn (RL), a proven early...
Education

Adapting PES Programs in Guatemala

Location:
Guatemala
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
Guatemala loses around 61,000 hectares of forest each year, driving biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, and high carbon emissions—60% of the national total. The main causes are unsustainable resource use and the expansion of agriculture and livestock...
Environment, Energy, and Climate Change

Scaling Emissions Markets

Location:
India
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
Emissions markets are a popular environmental regulatory tool to address the pollution externality. Through our work in Gujarat, we demonstrated that such markets can work in the Indian context. In Surat, treated industries that traded permits reduced PM...
Environment, Energy, and Climate Change

Scaling Every Child Counts in India

Location:
India
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
Every Child Counts leverages innate non-symbolic mathematical skills to build foundational formal math abilities in young children through four carefully designed games targeting number recognition, approximation, and spatial reasoning. Rigorously evaluated...
Education

Data Aggregation Pilot: Building Community & State Capacity for Improved Health Care Delivery

Researchers:
Location:
Zambia
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
Following the large-scale success of Zambia’s Community Health Assistant (CHA) program—originally evaluated by Ashraf et al. (2020) and linked to a 25% reduction in child malnutrition—the Ministry of Health scaled up the initiative nationwide. In parallel...
Health

Progressive Taxation in DRC

Researchers:
Location:
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
This project aims to scale up a progressive property tax system in two cities of the D.R. Congo, a low-income country with limited fiscal capacity. Despite progressivity being central to modern taxation, there is little empirical evidence on its effects in low...
Political Economy and Governance

Tax Compliance Incentives in a New Digital Tax Platform in Zambia

Researchers:
Location:
Zambia
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
In collaboration with the Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) and the International Growth Center, our team is building on years of joint research to improve VAT compliance and domestic revenue mobilization in Zambia. Building on an RCT with Lusaka retailers that...
Political Economy and Governance

Scaling an Effective Menstrual Hygiene Program in Madagascar

Researchers:
Location:
Madagascar
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
Through a randomized controlled trial in 140 Madagascan schools, we partnered with CARE to show that a comprehensive hygiene and menstrual health program significantly improved girls' learning outcomes (+0.15 SD increase). The program combined Young Girl...
Health Education Gender

Improving Foundational Numeracy Skills Through Phone-Based Targeted Tutoring: Scaling and Institutionalizing mEducation in the Philippines

Researchers:
Location:
Philippines
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
In response to the government’s call to improve learning outcomes, IPA and Youth Impact partnered with the Department of Education (DepEd) to pilot mEducation, a phone-based math program. Adapted from the Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) model, the eight...
Education

User-Centered Digital Applications to Streamline Social Protections in Rural India

Researchers:
Location:
India
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
Delays in processing social protection payments significantly harm vulnerable households. To address this challenge, we developed PayDash, a user-centered digital application designed to streamline government payment systems within India’s MGNREGS, the world’s...
Political Economy and Governance Social Protection

Scaling Up Information to Expedite Conciliation

Location:
Mexico
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
This project aims to scale a statistical calculator designed to support workers and firms engaged in firing disputes by facilitating informed conciliation and reducing labor lawsuits. The calculator provides data-driven estimates of typical settlement ranges...
Political Economy and Governance

Scaling Up the Adoption of Rainwater Harvesting Techniques in Niger

Researchers:
Location:
Niger
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
In situ rainwater-harvesting (RWH) techniques have the potential to increase agricultural yields in the face of low and erratic rainfall, reversing land degradation and combating desertification. With the Ministry of Environment and local research partners, we...
Agriculture Environment, Energy, and Climate Change

2024

2023

Redesigning Cash Transfers to Assist the Jobless in South Africa

Researchers:
Location:
South Africa
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
A team of Oxford and University of Cape Town researchers will collaborate with the South African Presidency, Social Security Agency (SASSA) and Social Development Department (DSD) to design and pilot modifications to an existing unconditional monthly cash...

Scaling ELA into ELAS: An Evaluation of Adolescent Empowerment in a School Setting

Researchers:
Location:
Uganda
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
BRAC’s flagship model for youth empowerment in Africa is Empowerment and Livelihoods for Adolescents (ELA), a program that has been in operation for more than 15 years. Focused on creating safe spaces for youth and delivering mentor-led, multifaceted...

2022

Economic impact of COVID-19: Evidence from Chile

Researchers:
  • Sean Higgins
  • Ana Maria Montoya
  • Eric Parrado
  • Raimundo Undurraga
Location:
Chile
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
Through a collaboration with the bank Banco de Crédito e Inversiones (BCI), the project team previously conducted a randomized evaluation to evaluate the effect of government-backed loans offered through the Chilean government’s FOGAPE program, which offers...

Improving the effectiveness of health insurance for vulnerable populations in Tamil Nadu: a scoping study to identify barriers across the insurance cascade

Researchers:
  • Sebastian Bauhoff
  • Nikkil Sudharsanan
Location:
India
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
The Tamil Nadu Health Systems Reforms Program (TNHSRP) has requested assistance to examine ways to improve the effectiveness of the state’s health insurance scheme. Although coverage is near universal among eligible (lower-income) households, not all eligible...

Adapting “Learning to Learn” through Government Systems

Researchers:
Location:
Uganda
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
A recent paper, titled “Learning to Teach by Learning to Learn”, with funding from J-PAL's Post-Primary Education initiative, provides evidence for a transformative and cost-effective general skills teacher training program in Uganda. The National Planning...

2021

Tutoring Online Project in the Dominican Republic (Year 1)

Researchers:
Location:
Dominican Republic
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, public schools in the Dominican Republic (DR) have been closed since early March. Ongoing school closures are expected to lead to learning losses and increased dropout rates, especially among the most vulnerable. In the absence of...

2020

Mask Up! Testing Strategies to Increase Mask Use in Kenya

Researchers:
  • Dennis Egger
  • Aleksandra Jakubowski
  • Michael Walker
Location:
Kenya
Type:
  • Full project
Although conflicting recommendations have been issued, recent evidence suggests that face masks may significantly reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2. However, questions remain on how to effectively promote mask adoption. Despite masks being mandatory, recent...
Health

Training Local Leaders to Prevent and Reduce Domestic Violence in their Communities

Researchers:
  • Ursula Aldana
  • Javier Romero
  • Livia Schubiger
Location:
Peru
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
There has been little research on the effectiveness of government interventions that aim to reduce and prevent intimate partner violence (IPV) at scale, despite the fact that IPV affects one in three women worldwide. Leaders in Action (LIA), the flagship...
Crime, Violence, and Conflict Gender

Using a Returns to Education Campaign to Avoid School Dropouts: A Pilot Replication in Times of COVID-19

Location:
Chile
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
Ongoing school closures in Chile due to the COVID-19 pandemic are threatening the education of millions of students in the country and increasing the probability of dropout cases, especially among the most vulnerable population. Leveraging an ongoing...
Education

A Pathway to Pay-for-Performance Teacher Motivation in Rwanda

Researchers:
Location:
Rwanda
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
Through a partnership between Innovations for Poverty Action, the International Growth Center, and the Rwanda Education Board, this project seeks to pilot a phased scale up of pay-for-performance (P4P) teacher contracts in Rwanda. Through enhancing new...
Education

Monitoring the Effects of COVID-19 in Indonesia Through Government Conditional Cash Transfer (PKH) Facilitators & Beneficiaries

Researchers:
Location:
Indonesia
Type:
  • Full project
Government cash transfer programs — such as Indonesia’s flagship Program Keluarga Harapan (PHK), which serves 10 million of Indonesia’s poorest individuals — are critical to the wellbeing of poor families and communities as employment dwindles and usual supply...
Social Protection

Intimate Partner Violence in the Era of Pandemic: Evaluating the Impact of COVID-19 and a Text-Based Mitigation Campaign in Urban Peru

Researchers:
Location:
Peru
Type:
  • Full project
In collaboration with the Peruvian Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations (MIMP), this project will co-create and evaluate the impact of an intimate partner violence (IPV) awareness campaign delivered remotely that is specifically targeted to men at risk...
Crime, Violence, and Conflict Gender

Giving Effective Information to Fight COVID-19

Researchers:
Location:
Mexico
Type:
  • Full project
Different and often contradicting messages occur in social media about COVID-19. Developing trustworthy communication strategies is critical to reduce the negative impact of COVID-19, yet measuring outcomes fast is a challenge. In partnership with the...
Health

Using Social Media to Spread Public Health Messages for COVID-19

Researchers:
Location:
India
Type:
  • Full project
Governments around the world are developing and implementing policies that slow the spread of COVID-19. One such policy is rapidly providing health-related information to people in order to promote healthy behaviors. Ex-ante, it is unclear which messages will...
Health

Accelerating Changes in Norms about Social Distancing to Combat COVID-19

Researchers:
Location:
Mozambique
Type:
  • Full project
Social distancing is one of the most important means to limit the spread of COVID-19. While public health messaging seeks to rapidly change norms to make social distancing more acceptable, norms do not shift instantaneously. Moreover, individuals are likely to...
Health

Scaling-up Effective Social Cohesion Programs: Integration of Syrian Refugee Children into Turkish System

Researchers:
Location:
Turkey
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
Currently, there are over 1 million Syrian children of age 5-17 in Turkey. Since 2016, the Turkish Ministry of Education has been developing policies to facilitate the integration of Syrian refugee children into the Turkish education system. Project PICTES...
Education

2019

Every Child Counts! Scale-Up Pilot in Tamil Nadu

Researchers:
Location:
India
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
Around 50 percent of children completing primary education in India can barely read or do arithmetic pitched at Grade 2 competencies. Though there are successful remedial programs focusing on children in Grades 3 to 5, intervening with children who are poised...
Education

2016

Catch Up Pilot Program

Researchers:
Location:
Zambia
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
Despite almost universal primary school enrollment in Zambia, many students fail to learn basic skills. In 2016, the Zambia Ministry of Education collaborated with J-PAL Africa to launch a pilot of the Zambia Catch Up Program in 80 schools, which was modeled...

Scaling Up a New Funds-Flow Mechanism for Government Payments in India

Researchers:
  • J-PAL South Asia
Location:
India
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
Low administrative capacity and pervasive corruption constrain the performance of social programs in many developing countries. The increasing promise of e-governance for delivering public services makes it possible to design mechanisms with fewer agents...

2015

Scaling Up Training Program for Informal Healthcare Providers in West Bengal, India

Researchers:
  • J-PAL South Asia
Location:
India
Type:
  • Path-to-scale project
Informal providers in the private sector with little or no formal medical training represent majority of India’s rural primary healthcare workforce. Given their strong community ties and presence where few alternatives exist, one potential solution to abate...
Health

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