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.

The Role of Protest Experience and Social Networks in Protest Movements in Hong Kong

Davide Cantoni
Noam Yuchtman
Y. Jane Zhang
In Hong Kong, researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of indirectly incentivizing protest participation on sustained participation in a political movement and to identify the role social networks play in protest turnout. Indirectly incentivizing participants to attend a...

Encouraging Paid Sick Leave among Female Garment Workers in Bangladesh

Manufacturing jobs can improve women’s economic empowerment, but health issues or caretaking often drive women out of the labor force. In partnership with a large garment Banladeshi manufactory firm, researchers are conducting a randomized evaluation to test the impact of text messages about paid...

Cash and Compliance with Social Distancing in Ghana

The researchers aim to understand the role that digital cash transfers can play as a policy tool both to increase household resilience during the pandemic and to stem the spread of the disease by increasing adherence to social distancing in Ghana.

The Effects of Free Drinking Water Treatment on Child Survival in Kenya

Ricardo Maertens
Brandon Joel Tan
Diarrhea is a leading cause of death in children under the age of 5, but adding small amounts of chlorine into water can treat water and prevent a large number of these deaths. Providing free dispensers for chlorine to treat water reduced under-five mortality. Children living in villages with dilute...

Providing Conditional Cash Transfers to Encourage Childhood Immunization in Pakistan

Sara Abdullah
Danya Arif
Subhash Chandir
Aamir Khan
In Pakistan, researchers conducted an evaluation to test the impact of different types of mobile conditional cash transfers (mCCTs) on childhood immunization coverage and timeliness. Overall, small mCCTs led to increases in rates of immunization coverage at a low administrative cost. Additionally...

Combating Corruption in Community Development in Indonesia

J-PAL affiliate Benjamin Olken (MIT) devised a method to measure corruption and used it to evaluate alternative strategies to reduce corruption on Indonesian roadbuilding projects. The evaluation tested two types of strategies: encouraging community participation and increasing the probability of...

Spousal Control and Intra-Household Decision Making in the Philippines

Researchers designed a field study to identify how information and communication affect intra-household decisions. They found that Filipino spouses who don't control the household spending and savings decisions deposit money into their own accounts in private settings and commit it to consumption...

Campaigns to Influence Voting Behavior in Uttar Pradesh, India

In order to examine how voter preferences vary with information about the relevance of ethnicity and politician quality, researchers randomly assigned polling stations during the 2007 Uttar Pradesh elections to two information campaigns, one calling for people not to vote for a party simply for...