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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.

Adoption of Insecticide Treated Bednets among Poor Households in Orissa, India

Brian Blackburn
Joanne Yoong
Researchers found that providing microloans to purchase ITNs increased ownership and use. However, the impact of these microloans on health was mixed, likely due to insufficient coverage and low usage rates of bednets.

Impacts and Challenges of a Teacher Training Program in Nepal

Julie Schaffner
Uttam Sharma
Training teachers to improve teacher quality and student learning is a common strategy taken by policymakers. In Nepal, researchers conducted a randomized evaluation of a government teacher training program for math and science teachers to evaluate the impact on student learning in secondary schools...

The Impact of Cash Transfers on the Educational Attainment, Sexual Behavior, and HIV Status of Adolescent Girls in Malawi

Ephraim Chirwa
Richard Garfein
Berk Ozler
In Malawi, researchers tested the relative effects of providing conditional and unconditional cash transfers to teenage girls and their families. Among girls enrolled in school at the start of the program, conditional cash transfers increased school attendance and reduced HIV prevalence while...

Offering Amenities to Increase Health Care Demand in Mexico

Researchers conducted an evaluation to test the impact of offering a high-amenity diagnostic consultation for cataracts at different prices on uptake of an underutilized service—cataract surgery—in Mexico. Lower prices for the high-amenity consultation increased exposure to amenities, which...

Student Plagiarism and Rational Ignorance in the United States

Thomas S. Dee
By subjecting the papers to an electronic anti-plagiarism program, researchers found that the tutorial significantly reduced the likelihood of plagiarism, particularly among students with lower college entrance scores who had the highest rates of plagiarism. A follow-up survey suggests that the...

Evidence-Based Medicine for Family Planning in Jordan

Nadia Al-Alawi
Shirin Aladwan
Minki Chatterji
Soon Kyu Choi
Marianne El-Khoury
Researchers partnered with USAID to study the impact of Evidence-Based Medicine programs on changing family planning providers’ biases against injectable contraceptives. Overall, researchers found no change in provider practices and self-reported prescriptions.

Training Informal Healthcare Providers to Improve the Quality of Care in India

Informal healthcare workers with little to no training provide more than 70 percent of all primary care in rural India. In this study, researchers evaluated the impact of a nine-month training...

The Effect of Academic Achievement Awards on College Success in Canada

Joshua Angrist
Tyler Williams
Researchers examined the impact of a program that offered financial merit awards combined with academic support services on the learning outcomes of Canadian university students. Results suggest that the impact of such incentives was modest.