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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.

Release: New J-PAL initiative to apply the scientific method to improve science funding and policy

Cambridge, MA—The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT today announced the new Science for Progress Initiative (SfPI), designed to catalyze scientific research on the scientific process. Its purpose is to produce rigorous, quantitative evidence from randomized evaluations on the most...

October 2022 North America Newsletter

J-PAL North America's October 2022 newsletter features blog posts on inclusive language at J-PAL; rigorous research in maternal health; and our Associate Directors of Policy and Research

Mobile money may help lift people out of poverty

Mobile money services, which allow users to store and exchange monetary values via mobile phone, may help lift people in developing economies out of poverty, a new study led by an Indian origin researcher suggests.

Stanford University to study foreign agricultural worker program in WA

Use of the H-2A program, where agricultural employers hire foreign workers seasonally when they cannot find enough local labor, has skyrocketed since the turn of the millennium. Yakima County had 8,000 such workers October 2021 and June 2022. Researchers from Stanford University and the Washington...

Foundational Learning Key To Improving Learning Outcomes

Children in sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria, experienced a learning crisis that worsened due to prolonged school closures and other disruptions to the education system during the COVID-19 pandemic. Evidence-based approaches that will accelerate the learning of foundational skills, such as...

MIT Professor says the pandemic exposed the need to update U.S. government technology

NPR
NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer talks with MIT economics professor David Autor about how outdated U.S. government technology contributed to fraud in pandemic aid, like the Paycheck Protection Program.

Economist Chris Blattman has reshaped our understanding of violence and poverty

Vox
Chris Blattman, economist and political scientist at the University of Chicago, is one of Vox's Future Perfect 50.

Development programs don’t always work. Rachel Glennerster figures out how and why.

Vox
Rachel Glennerster, economist, is one of Vox's Future Perfect 50. These are the people making the future a better place for everyone.