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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.

Empowering women through mobile money in Tanzania

Empowering women not only has the potential to improve their lives, but also their children's health and education. In partnership with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and BRAC, researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test whether encouraging women to make weekly loan repayments...

Improving Tax Compliance through Behavioral Messages in Latvia

Nina Mazar
Iman Sen
In partnership with the Latvian tax authority, researchers tested several types of emails to investigate the effect of behaviorally-informed messages on tax compliance. Messages that aimed to deter bad behavior by highlighting taxpayers’ moral obligations towards action increased on-time tax...

Cash Transfers During a Pandemic: Evidence from a Kenyan Slum

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of providing cash transfers to female entrepreneurs during the pandemic on their business outcomes and behavior. Firm profit, inventory spending, and food expenditures all increased for business owners that received the cash transfer...

The Impact of Information on Preferences for Allocating Land in Nepal

Bhishma Bhusal
Abraham Holland
Researchers introduced a randomized information intervention to see if providing information on how different allocation methods work would shift the preferences of beneficiaries of a Nepalese land allocation program. On average, the information intervention did not change preferences for how land...

Vouchers to Help Farmers Access Rental Equipment Markets in India

Partnering with one of the biggest providers of rental agricultural equipment in India, researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of providing agricultural equipment vouchers and cash transfers on farmers’ use of machines, their decision to reallocate household labor or hire...

Impact of school-based training on social cohesion for immigrant children in Finland

Matti Sarvimaki
Mikko Silliman
Marco Tabellini
Researchers partnered with a local non-profit, Walter, to evaluate the effectiveness of two school-based social cohesion interventions for immigrants’ children in Finnish schools.

The impact of paying farmers not to burn crop residue in India

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of offering financial rewards to farmers to stop burning rice stalk stubble on their eventual crop residue burning decisions in Punjab, India. They found that pre-harvest payments to farmers helped them to take costly actions to reduce...

Digital Monitoring and Health Service Provision in Sierra Leone

In many countries, rural populations access social services through decentralized systems that hire community-based workers with high monitoring needs, leaving little time for supervisors to perform other essential functions. Researchers are evaluating the impact of a phone-based e-monitoring app...