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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.

Seed Fairs for the Diffusion of New Crop Varieties in India

Manzoor H. Dar
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test whether organizing short learning sessions for villagers about early adopters’ use of a flood-tolerant rice seed variety, Swarna-Sub1, impacted other farmers’ adoption of it. These “farmer field days” were a cost-effective strategy to improve...

Pay for Perfomance Incentives for Heathcare Workers in Pakistan

James Andreoni
Karrar Jaffar
Charles Sprenger
Polio is endemic in Pakistan, and vaccination campaigns often suffer when government health workers hired to administer the vaccine underperform. Researchers introduced individualized bonus contracts to health workers to evaluate the impact of time preferences on vaccine delivery and quality of...

Using Cell Phones to Monitor the Delivery of Government Payments to Farmers in India

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of a cell phone-based monitoring system on the delivery of government-issued payments for farmers in Telangana, India. The system significantly improved the likelihood of farmers ever receiving their payments as well as receiving them...

Follow-Up Phone Calls to Reduce the Costs of Job Search Among Job Seekers in Pakistan

Nivedhitha Subramanian
Kate Vyborny
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of reducing the psychological costs of job applications, such as the tendency to postpone applications because completing a task today seems more burdensome than tomorrow, on job application rates and interviews in Lahore, Pakistan...

Police Performance and Public Perception in Rajasthan, India

In this randomized evaluation in Rajasthan, India, researchers examined the effectiveness of five interventions on police performance: limiting administrative transfers; rotating duties and days off; elevating community involvement; incorporating on-duty training; and implementing “decoy” visits by...

Unpacking the Links from Financial Education to Financial Behaviors in India

Fenella Carpena
Jeremy Shapiro
Bilal Zia
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation of a video-based financial education course on participants’ financial behaviors in India to study which components of financial education programs are most effective. While the course alone had no impact on participants’ abilities to carry out financial...

Microfinance to Increase Social Capital and Female Empowerment in India

Benjamin Feigenberg
Shayak Sarkar
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...

The Effect of Increased Autonomy vs. Performance Pay on Procurement Officers' Performance in Pakistan

Researchers partnered with several agencies of the Government of Punjab, Pakistan, to evaluate the impact of giving procurement officers more autonomy, compared to financial rewards, on public procurement performance. Shifting authority away from supervisors and towards procurement officers improved...