Blog

News

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.

Offering Cash and In-Kind Transfers to Grow and Sustain Microenterprises in Sri Lanka

Researchers provided small one-time grants to microenterprises in Sri Lanka to measure the impact of the additional capital on business profits two and five years later. They found that cash and in-kind grants increased business profits for male owners in the short and long term, but did not lead to...

Handwashing and Behavior Change in Bangladesh

Dayea Oh
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of an edutainment intervention at schools and the provision of handwashing resources at home on handwashing at school and at home. These findings suggest that encouraging behavior change in one setting may crowd out like behavior in...

Teacher Performance Pay in Andhra Pradesh, India

Venkatesh Sundararaman
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh to measure the relative effectiveness of conditional versus unconditional bonuses on improving the quality of schools. Offering conditional incentives to individual teachers was a cost-effective way to improve...

Formal Rainfall Insurance for the Informally Insured in India

Mark Rosenzweig
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test how informal insurance within Indian sub-castes affected the demand for formal rainfall insurance, and subsequent risk-taking among households employed in agriculture. Informal insurance both increased and decreased the demand for formal rainfall...

The Value of Regulatory Discretion: Estimates from Environmental Inspections in India

Researchers are evaluating the impact of making environmental inspections of high-polluting industrial plants more frequent and removing regulator discretion in selecting plants for inspection on regulatory compliance and pollution emissions in Gujarat, India.

Participatory Development and Social Preferences: Experimental Evidence from Bangladesh

Serena Cocciolo
Selene Ghisolfi
Researchers are conducting a lab-in-the-field study to measure the impact of a community-driven development program in Bangladesh on participants’ preferences and values about fairness, equity, civic engagement, and participatory decision-making.

Demand for Information on Environmental Health Risk, Mode of Delivery, and Behavioral Change: Evidence from Sonargaon, Bangladesh

Kazi Matin Ahmed
Alexander van Geen
Ricardo Maertens
In Bangladesh, researchers evaluated the impact of different selling schemes on demand for water testing, and the impact of test results on switching to a safer well. Although group test sales and well safety placards increased substantially the likelihood that households switched to a possibly...

Safe Cities: Improving the Citizen-Police Interface in Pakistan

Researchers partnered with the Punjab Safe Cities Authority to evaluate how to improve citizen’s access to and experience with police services.