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.

Insurance, Credit and Technology Adoption in Malawi

Xavier Giné
In Malawi, researchers examined the effect of bundling rainfall index insurance with a credit program on farmers’ demand for credit. They found that bundling insurance with credit reduced the demand for credit, from 33 percent for credit alone to 17.6 percent for the bundled product.

Urban Property Rights in Mongolia

Researchers are evaluating the effect of an ownership assistance program on residents’ income, assets, and general financial behavior.

The Impact of Entrepreneurship Training for Women in Uganda

In Uganda, researchers evaluated the effect of standardized business skills training on business performance as compared to more personalized mentoring services.

Improving Governance Through Biometric Authentication and Secure Payments in India

In India, a biometrically authenticated payment system reduced corruption and substantially improved the delivery of government social assistance programs despite partial implementation.

The Impact of Online Lesson Plans on Student Learning in the United States

Researchers evaluated the impact of providing teachers with access to high-quality online lessons and implementation support on student achievement in mathematics. Providing teachers with access to the lessons, reminders, and implementation support significantly increased student achievement.

Marketing Rainfall Insurance in India

Sarthak Gaurav
Jeremy Tobacman
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of providing financial literacy education alongside various marketing strategies to small-scale farmers in Gujarat, India, on their demand for rainfall index insurance. Financial education had a significant effect on adoption of...

Reducing Inequality through a Summer Youth Employment Program in Boston

Researchers used survey data to evaluate short-term outcomes for Boston’s SYEP participants in 2015. They found that the program significantly improved participants’ community engagement and social skills, many job readiness skills, and some academic aspirations.

The Role of the VAT for Tax Enforcement

The Value Added Tax (VAT) system, which generates a paper trail on transactions between firms, facilitated tax enforcement by spreading the impact of enforcement measures up the production chain in a study with over 400,000 firms in Chile.