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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.

Increasing Mobile Banking Use Among Rural Populations in Ghana

Researchers assessed the impact of financial incentives and peer endorsement on mobile banking adoption and formal savings in Ghana. While financial incentives boosted adoption by 50 percent, peer endorsement was twice as effective, leading to sustained mobile banking use and a 30 percent increase...

Changing Teenage Girls' Aspirations and Educational Attainment through Increased Female Representation in Leadership in India

In 2008, women accounted for 18 percent of parliamentarians worldwide, and only 13 countries had a female head of government. In India, researchers studied the impact of a constitutional amendment that reserved village council leadership positions for women on adolescent girls’ career aspirations...

Impacts of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs on Voting in Honduras

In this randomized evaluation in Honduras, researchers assessed how the national Programa de Asignación Familiar (Family Allowance Program) CCT program, which provided a combination of transfers to households and transfers to support public goods, influenced voting in local and national elections...

Measuring the Impact of Clientelism on Voter Behavior in Benin

Christel Vermeersch
Voters in Benin had a preference for clientelist political platforms, but certain subsets of voters such as women, consumers of mass media, and members of social organizations were less receptive to clientelism.

Mobilizing Black Voters Using Direct Mail and Commercial Phone Banks in the United States

Researchers evaluated the impact of direct mail and phone calls on the turnout of Black voters in ten different states. Neither mailings nor phone calls significantly impacted voter turnout, perhaps due to the large volume of political messaging that voters had to navigate.

Selective Trials for Agricultural Technology Adoption and Experimentation in Kenya

Catlan Reardon
Erik Snowberg
Researchers are investigating how important these differences are when it comes to increasing the use of irrigation pumps in western Kenya, and whether subsidies for experimentation can be targeted based on certain skills or traits to more effectively increase technology adoption.