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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.

Combating Vote-Selling in the Philippines

Allen Hicken
Stephen Leider
Nico Ravanilla
Vote-buying and vote-selling can obstruct the democratic process, yet they remain pervasive in many developing democracies. Researchers asked voters in the Philippines to make a simple, unenforceable promise not to accept money from politicians or to promise to vote according to their conscience...

Learning the Value of Education on Investment in Education in the Dominican Republic

Lucas Coffman
Ryan Cooper
Daniel Morales
How important are the returns to education in determining schooling decisions? Do students have accurate information about these returns when they choose whether to continue schooling? In partnership with the Ministry of Education in the Dominican Republic, researchers are evaluating the impact of...

Personalizing Information to Improve Retirement Savings in Chile

Olga Fuentes Contreras
Julio Riutort
F_lix Villatoro
Researchers partnered with Chile’s national pension authority to evaluate the effect of personalized versus generic information, delivered via self-service kiosks at government offices, on long-term savings. People who received personalized information increased their voluntary contributions in the...

Social Incentives and Tax Compliance in Bangladesh

Monica Singhal
Researchers studied the impact of an innovative taxpayer recognition program that appealed to business owners’ desires for social recognition on firms’ value-added tax (VAT) compliance and payment rates in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Preliminary results suggested that in areas where some firms were already...

Evaluating Post-Secondary Aid: Enrollment, Persistence, and Projected Completion Effects

Joshua Angrist
Sally Hudson
Researchers partnered with the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation to randomly offer scholarships to Nebraska high school graduates who applied for financial assistance. Initial results from the ongoing study indicate that scholarship offers increased college enrollment and persistence while shifting...

The Impact of Poverty Reduction on Child Health, Nutrition, and Sleep in the United States

Nathan Fox
Sarah Halpern-Meekin
Emma Hart
Alicia Kunin-Batson
Katherine Magnuson
Kimberly Noble
Jessica Sperber
Hiro Yoshikawa
To understand the causal impact of poverty reduction on children’s health, nutrition, sleep, and healthcare utilization, among other outcomes, researchers randomly assigned new mothers to receive an unconditional cash transfer of $333 (high-cash group) or $20 per month (low-cash group) in the Baby’s...

Identity in Charitable Giving in the United States

Katherine Milkman
A large charitable organization in the United States conducted a series of direct mail appeals for donations using different identity primes in 2009-2010. Researchers found that priming a potential donor’s identity as either a previous donor to charity or as a member of their local community...