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In South Africa, researchers evaluated whether people have enough information to identify reliable borrowers among their peers and if they can help enforce loan repayment. They found that when given incentives, peers were not effective at screening for creditworthiness, but they were effective at...

In Ghana, researchers are evaluating the impact of a health communications program, which includes in-person, radio, and mobile phone interventions, on five key health behaviors.

Researchers analyzed the introduction of microcredit programs in parts of rural Ethiopia to evaluate the effect of improved credit access on economic and social outcomes. They found that introducing microcredit programs increased the frequency of borrowing and amount borrowed by rural households in...

In India, researchers randomly assigned microfinance clients to monthly or weekly meeting schedules to test whether more frequent meetings could build social capital. They found that weekly meetings lead to higher levels of social interaction that continued beyond the initial loan cycle, which...

Youth living in poor urban areas face a number of psychological and social barriers to finding work. In France, over 40 percent of these youth are unemployed, twice as much the national youth unemployment rate. Researchers partnered with the French Public Employment Services to test the...

To understand the causal impact of poverty reduction on children’s health, nutrition, sleep, and healthcare utilization, among other outcomes, researchers randomly assigned new mothers to receive an unconditional cash transfer of $333 (high-cash group) or $20 per month (low-cash group) in the Baby’s...