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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.

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...

Improving Financial Inclusion through Mobile Banking in Bangladesh

Jean Lee
Jonathan Morduch
Researchers partnered with bKash, one of the leading mobile money providers in Bangladesh, to evaluate the impact of targeted training programs on mobile banking uptake among migrant households. Training increased migrants’ and their families’ adoption of mobile banking, with women adopting the...

Improving Student Learning through Classroom Technology Adoption in Pakistan

Waqas Halim
Umar Saif
Researchers partnered with the Government of Pakistan to conduct two parallel randomized evaluations to test the impact of providing supplemental teaching materials on the quality of student learning and teachers’ effectiveness. Overall, the eLearn Classroom intervention improved student achievement...

Training Teachers in Curiosity-Based Science Pedagogy in India

Ariel Gomez
Vinay Jha
Santosh Kumar
Sandeep Kumar
Nishith Prakash
Soham Sahoo
Despite making great strides in expanding access to education, developing countries like India continue to lag in measures of actual student learning. To understand how quality of education mediates learning, this randomized control trial evaluates a pedagogical intervention training science...

Soft Skills Training for Supervisors to Boost Productivity and Worker Satisfaction in India

Identifying and training effective managers is crucial for improving both firm productivity and worker well-being. Researchers are conducting a randomized evaluation to test the impact of different combinations of managerial screening and training tools on business and worker well-being outcomes.

Extra Contract Teachers in Andhra Pradesh, India

Venkatesh Sundararaman
Researchers evaluated the impact of hiring extra contract teachers in primary schools in India on student learning. Results show that students in schools with an extra contract teacher performed significantly better than those in comparison schools in both math and language areas. Evidence also...

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...

Election Fraud and Government Legitimacy in Afghanistan

Eli Berman
Clark Gibson
James Long
Researchers evaluated the impact of photographic monitoring technology on aggregation fraud and perceptions of government legitimacy during the 2010 parliamentary elections in Afghanistan. The announcement of a new monitoring technology reduced both theft of election materials and vote counts for...