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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.

Online Customer Discrimination against Female Workers in Sub-Saharan Africa

Matthew Pecenco
Edward Rubin
Researchers evaluated the impact of gender-based discrimination on female teleworkers’ productivity in online sales interactions with customers in Africa. When a customer chat representative had a female-sounding name, it led to significantly fewer purchases, and slower and more reserved reactions...

Avoiding Injuries at Home for Older People in France

Simon Beck
Lucile Romanello
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to understand whether providing information about the risk of accident and methods for prevention, or incentives to install home safety measures affect take-up of a home safety adaptations program. Cost reduction incentives and information disclosures...

Local Elites and Targeted Social Programs in Indonesia

Vivi Alatas
Ririn Purnamasari
Matthew Wai-Poi
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to study the impact of elite capture in a conditional cash transfer program in Indonesia. Elite capture existed in some programs, but the welfare losses created were small, suggesting that improving administrative capabilities in targeting methods might...

Radio Advertisements to Increase Electoral Competition in the United States

Costas Panagopoulos
Researchers examined the effect of radio advertisements on electoral competition through a randomized evaluation and found that radio advertisements that stated the names of both incumbents and challengers, reminded listeners about the date of the upcoming election, and encouraged them to vote...

Incentives, Selection and Productivity in Labor Markets in Malawi

Researchers evaluated the effect of randomly offering varied wages to bean-sorting workers in rural Malawi. While offering higher wages caused workers to increase their productivity, it did not attract more productive workers.