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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.

Informal Math Games to Improve Children's Readiness for Learning School Mathematics in India

By the time they reach primary school, disadvantaged children often lag behind their more advantaged peers in the skills and concepts of formal math. To address this issue, researchers examined the impact of math games, played in preschools and exercising early emerging, universal and intuitive...

Testing Commitment Devices for Remittances among Filipino Migrants in Rome

Giuseppe De Arcangelis
Majlinda Joxhe
David McKenzie
Erwin Tiongson
Researchers evaluated the impact of enabling Filipino migrants to label remittances for education on the amount of money they sent home. Labeling remittances as funds to be used for education raised the amount of money migrants sent home substantially (over 15 percent).

Workplace Wellness Programs to Improve Employee Health Behaviors in the United States

Zirui Song
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation of a comprehensive, multi-site workplace wellness program to evaluate the program’s impact on self-reported and clinical health outcomes, health care spending and utilization, and employment outcomes. The program did not have a measurable effect on any...

Gazelles in Ghana: Identifying High-Growth Firms Through Panel Judges or Survey Instruments

Researchers conducted a business plan competition to test whether panel judges or questionnaires answered by firm owners could more accurately identify the fastest growing firms in Ghana. Both survey assessments and judging of business plans through panels selected firms with the potential for...

Organizational Barriers to Technology Adoption: Evidence from Soccer-Ball Producers in Pakistan

Businesses may be slow to adopt a new technology even when it offers clear benefits. Researchers introduced a new fabric cutting technology to a randomly selected group of soccer ball manufacturers in Pakistan, but very few firms adopted it. They hypothesized that the most likely explanation for low...