Blog

News

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.

Using Text Messages to Prevent the Spread of Covid-19 in India

Girija Bahety
Dev Patel
James Potter
Researchers tested whether reminders delivered via text message improved knowledge and adoption of social distancing and handwashing. They found no evidence that individuals changed their self-reported behaviors; this finding may highlight limited effectiveness of SMS-based information campaigns...

Impact of Job Uncertainty and Work Experience on Job Seeker Performance, Employment, and Earnings in Malawi

In Lilongwe, Malawi, researchers provided applicants for a health interviewer job with a random chance of receiving a back-up job, regardless of their success in being hired as a health interviewer, to measure (a) the impact of uncertainty on job search performance and (b) the returns to work...

Peer Effects, Alcohol, and College Roommates in the United States

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to measure the impact of having a roommate who drank alcohol frequently before college on college students' grade point averages (GPAs). Results show that, while female students' GPAs were not affected by their roommate's drinking prior to college, male...

Rates of Return to Fertilizer: Evidence from Field Experiments in Kenya

Jonathan Robinson
Researchers in Kenya collaborated with the NGO International Child Support to measure the returns to different types of fertilizer among local farmers. While results show that all interventions led to increases in yield, rate-of-return calculations indicate that not all were profitable for the...

The Impact of Information Provision on Farmer Decision Making in Indonesia

Joshua Schwartzstein
In Indonesia, researchers conducted a randomized evaluation with seaweed farmers to observe both the impact of participating in a program that determined optimal seaweed production methods and receiving summarized results of the program on the adoption of optimal farming inputs. They find that...

Returns to Secondary Schooling in Ghana

In this ongoing study, researchers are evaluating the effect of secondary school scholarships on educational attainment and cognitive skills in the short run, and on life outcomes in the longer run, from employment and health outcomes to civic participation and attitudes.

Improving Student Learning through Classroom Technology Adoption in Pakistan

Waqas Halim
Umar Saif
Researchers partnered with the Government of Pakistan to conduct two parallel randomized evaluations to test the impact of providing supplemental teaching materials on the quality of student learning and teachers’ effectiveness. Overall, the eLearn Classroom intervention improved student achievement...