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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.

Increasing Take-Up of the Earned Income Tax Credit

Across six randomized evaluations, researchers studied the impact of low-cost, low-touch informational interventions, or “nudges,” on take-up of the federal and state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in California. None of the interventions had an impact on EITC take-up, suggesting that information...

Learning beyond school: the impact of a remedial learning and literacy program on out-of-school girls in Pakistan

This project used a randomized evaluation to study the effect of a learning program targeting adolescent girls on their education, aspirations, and empowerment.

Community Driven Development in the Philippines

Amanda Beatty
Ariel BenYishay
Elisabeth King
Aniceto Orbeta
Community-based approaches to development, also called community-driven development (CDD), seek to empower local communities to identify and implement the projects they most need. Researchers evaluated the impact of a national community-driven development program in the Philippines on governance...

Building Trust in Fertilizer Quality Among Farmers in Tanzania

Annemie Maertens
Researchers conducted an evaluation to test the impact of an information campaign about fertilizer quality on farmers’ beliefs and their purchase and use of fertilizer. The information campaign led farmers to change their beliefs about the quality of fertilizer available in local markets and to buy...

Training Teachers in Curiosity-Based Science Pedagogy in India

Ariel Gomez
Vinay Jha
Sandeep Kumar
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...

Extending Health Insurance to the Informal Sector Through Microfinance in Nicaragua

Freddy Solis Diaz
Martha Azucena Gonzalez
Laurel Hatt
Mursaleena Islam
This evaluation measured the determinants of insurance enrollment as well as the impacts of having insurance for informal sector workers by randomly varying the costs and convenience of signing up for a government health insurance program available to formal and informal sector workers in Nicaragua...

Measuring the Impact of Microfinance in Hyderabad, India

Researchers evaluated the impact of increased access to microcredit on the economic and social well-being of women and their families in Hyderabad, India. They found that microcredit had mixed effects on business activities and little to no effect on women’s empowerment or children’s education.

The Psychology of Debt: An Experiment in the Philippines

Researchers are testing whether giving vendors money to pay off their outstanding debts or offering financial literacy trainings can help break these borrowers' cycles of debt.