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 Effects of Kindergarten Classroom on Earnings in the United States

John Friedman
Nathaniel Hilger
Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach
Danny Yagan
Researchers measured the effect of class size, teacher quality, and classroom quality on earnings and other future outcomes for children participating in the Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) project in Tennessee. The study found that smaller class sizes raised college attendance, more...

The Role of Social Connections in the Delivery of Extension Services and Technology Adoption in Uganda

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test both the impact of BRAC’s extension program on economic outcomes and the role of social incentives in shaping the delivery of the program to farmers. While they found that overall, farmers in villages that received the program had higher...

Text Messages as Reminders for Antiretroviral Medication Adherence in Kenya

David R. Bangsberg
Markus Goldstein
Jessica Haberer
Sylvester Kimaiyo
Leslie MacKeen
Duncan Ngare
John Sidle
Harsha Thirumurthy
Damien de Walque
Joshua Graff Zivin
Researchers introduced text message reminders to evaluate their effect on Kenyan patients taking their antiretrovirals consistently and not skipping doses. Patients who received weekly text messages were more likely to take their medicine 90 percent of the time and were less likely to skip doses for...

Improving Measurement of Farmers Skills in Western Kenya

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation in western Kenya to test how farmer participation in agronomic trials impacted their experimentation on their own farms with different input combinations and impacted their use of high-quality inputs, yields, adoption of new crops, and profitability...

Student Incentive Structures in Malawi

Hyuncheol Kim
Hyuk Harry Son
Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of two different performance-based incentives on students’ test scores, motivation, and behavior in Malawi. They find that tournament-style incentives that rewarded the top performers among a large group lowered test scores and student...

Sensitivity to Interest Rates and Account Ownership Requirements for a Commitment Savings Account in the Philippines

Researchers worked with First Valley Bank in the Philippines to evaluate the impact of varying the interest rate and account ownership requirements on demand for commitment savings accounts. While savings account take-up was 23 percent, neither the interest rates nor the ownership requirements...

The Impact of a Tax Holiday Lottery in Uruguay

Thad Dunning
Felipe Monestier
Rafael Piñeiro
Fernando Rosenblatt
Guadalupe Tuñón
Researchers tested in the case of Montevideo, Uruguay the impact of winning a tax holiday on subsequent tax compliance. Winners of the tax holiday lottery were 3 percentage points less likely to pay taxes in subsequent payment cycles, likely because the holiday disrupted the habit of tax paying, and...