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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.

The Impact of Messaging and Incentives on Survey Response Rates to Understand Barriers COVID-19 Testing in the United States

To better understand barriers to COVID-19 testing for underserved communities, researchers evaluated the impact of varying flyer messaging and survey incentive rates on survey responses. Researchers will use survey responses to identify the most important barriers to testing and potential community...

Financial Diaries and Education to Improve Women's Financial Literacy in Rural Bangladesh

Zabid Iqbal
Vy Nguyen
Russell Smyth
In rural Bangladesh, researchers evaluated the impacts of teaching women to track spending in financial diaries and providing a traditional financial education program on their financial literacy and well-being. Study participants had higher financial literacy levels after receiving either...

Finding Missing Markets: An Agricultural Brokerage Intervention in Kenya

Xavier Giné
Researchers evaluated whether a package of services, designed to help link smallholder farmers to commercial banks, retail farm suppliers, transportation services, and exporters, could help small farmers in Kenya adopt, finance, and market export crops, and thus make more income. One year after the...

Small Individual Loans and Mental Health in South Africa

This evaluation examined the direct impact of providing small consumer loans to marginally creditworthy individuals in South Africa on their credit access, investment, and well-being, as well as the profitability of these loans for lenders. Results found approving loans for marginally creditworthy...

Counseling the Unemployed in France (OPP/CVE)

An intensive counseling program for job seekers at risk of long-term unemployment in France helped them find work sooner than the standard low-intensity counseling program, and the counseling was more effective when provided by a public agency than by private contractors.

Improving the Design of Conditional Transfer Programs in Colombia

Researchers in Bogotá, Colombia, evaluated whether changing the timing and type of CCTs could lead to greater impact on educational attainment. All CCT variations had similarly positive impacts on school attendance, but transfers conditional on continued education had a greater impact on secondary...

Educational Returns of Boarding Schools for Underserved Secondary School Children in France

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of boarding schools on educational outcomes and well-being for children with disadvantaged backgrounds in France. The top third of students admitted to France’s first “boarding school of excellence” had large improvements in math...

Gender Violence and School Achievement in Mozambique

In Mozambique, researchers are evaluating the GBV and schooling impacts of implementing a GBV curriculum targeted at students.