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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.

Union Leaders and Factory Workers’ Collective Action in Myanmar

Labor movements can improve workers’ lives but face great difficulty in getting workers to agree on common goals and take collective actions. In garment factory workers’ group discussions on minimum wage policies in Myanmar, researchers randomly included union leaders to study whether the presence...

Priming Adverse Events and Reports of Depression in Nigeria

Kevin McGee
Gbemisola Oseni
Julie Perng
Ryoko Sato
Tomomi Tanaka
Renos Vakis
To better understand how to measure and report depression, researchers randomized the order of questions in a national survey to examine the effect of triggering memories of difficult events, such as conflicts, shocks, and death, on reported levels of depression across households in Nigeria. They...

Improving Women’s Labor and Welfare Outcomes through Microfinance in Uganda

Researchers in rural Western Uganda tested whether a microfinance program can help women borrowers switch out of subsistence agriculture to other labor activities, such as entrepreneurship or small-scale trading. While microloans helped women switch into service-based jobs including small-scale...

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Learning in Brazil

Lycia Lima
Flávio Riva
Researchers evaluated the learning impacts of using AI systems to score and comment on essays written for Brazil’s national post-secondary admission exam. In schools where AI technology was introduced, teachers were able to provide more frequent individualized feedback to students, and students’...

Gender-specific managerial training program and firm productivity in Colombia

Researchers are evaluating the impact of providing a gender-specific managerial training program on career advancement prospects for women and workplace productivity.

Increasing Women’s Local Political Participation Through Top-Down and Bottom-Up Training in Indonesia

A researcher evaluated the impact of empowerment training for female citizens and training for male council chairs on women's participation in neighborhood associations, known as rukun tetangga (RT) in Malang, East Java, Indonesia.

Revealing Stereotypes about Immigrant Students to Middle School Teachers in Italy

Researchers evaluated the impact of informing middle school teachers in Italy about their implicit stereotypes towards immigrant students on end-of-year grading. Both math and literature teachers eligible to receive feedback before the end-of-the-year grading gave higher grades to immigrant students...

Partnership Schools for Liberia (PSL)

Researchers worked with Innovations for Poverty Action, the Liberian Ministry of Education, and the group of eight private operators to conduct a randomized evaluation to assess the effects of outsourcing management of public schools after one and three years.