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.

Marketing Rainfall Insurance in India

Sarthak Gaurav
Jeremy Tobacman
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of providing financial literacy education alongside various marketing strategies to small-scale farmers in Gujarat, India, on their demand for rainfall index insurance. Financial education had a significant effect on adoption of...

The Role of the VAT for Tax Enforcement

The Value Added Tax (VAT) system, which generates a paper trail on transactions between firms, facilitated tax enforcement by spreading the impact of enforcement measures up the production chain in a study with over 400,000 firms in Chile.

Financial Education vs. Access to Finance Among Filipino Migrants

Paolo Abarcar
Rashmi Barua
International remittances are an important financial tool for many developing countries, and many organizations offer financial products or financial education services to help families manage the remittances they receive. Researchers provided families with financial products and financial education...

Performance Incentives and Grants for Health in China

Renfu Luo
Scott Rozelle
Sean Sylvia
Marcos Vera-Hernandez
In many developing countries, absenteeism, lack of accountability, and corruption among public employees prevent the effective distribution of public services. Researchers examined how performance incentives and increased resources for school principals affected the implementation of a school-based...

Improving Learning Outcomes through the Government School System in India

Researchers evaluated the impact on student learning outcomes of two programs introduced by the Government of Haryana. While the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) program did not have any effect on test scores, the Learning Enhancement Program (LEP), which focused on basic literacy and...

The Effect of Increased Autonomy vs. Performance Pay on Procurement Officers' Performance in Pakistan

Researchers partnered with several agencies of the Government of Punjab, Pakistan, to evaluate the impact of giving procurement officers more autonomy, compared to financial rewards, on public procurement performance. Shifting authority away from supervisors and towards procurement officers improved...