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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 Access to Security and Justice through Women's Help Desks in Police Stations in India

Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner
Akshay Mangla
Researchers are employing an RCT to evaluate whether the establishment of police station-level Women’s Help Desks (WHDs), as well as the deployment of additional female personnel to these WHDs, improves the responsiveness of frontline officers to women, as well as levels of crime and crime reporting...

Influencing Higher Education Choices through a Customized Digital Application Platform in the Dominican Republic

Researchers are partnering with the Government of the Dominican Republic to introduce a custom tablet application to prospective students on what tertiary education programs, scholarships, and funding options exist based on their interests and finances, as well as employment rates and earnings...

Discrimination in the Job Market in the United States

Researchers examined the level of racial discrimination in the United States labor market by randomly assigning identical résumés black-sounding or white-sounding names and observing the impact on requests for interviews from employers. Results found that résumés with white-sounding names received...

Project Generasi: Conditional Community Block Grants in Indonesia

Junko Onishi
Susan Wong
Researchers partnered with the Government of Indonesia to evaluate the impact of community block grants and the additional effect of performance incentives. They found that community block grants improved health and education in Indonesian villages, and adding performance incentives sped up...

Graduating the Ultra-Poor in Peru

Bram Thuysbaert
Researchers evaluated a multi-faceted approach aimed at improving long term income of the ultra-poor in Peru. They found that the approach had long-lasting economic and self-employment impacts and that the long-run benefits, measured in terms of household expenditures, outweighed their up-front...

School Libraries and Language Skills in Indian Primary Schools: A Randomized Evaluation of the Akshara Library Program

Evan Borkum
Fang He
Researchers partnered with the Akshara Foundation in Bangalore, India to evaluate the impact of hiring trained librarians in primary schools on students’ academic achievement. Overall, the intervention had little effect on students' language, math, and science skills and had no impact on student...

Moving to Opportunity or Isolation? Network Effects of a Slum Relocation Program in India

Sharon Barnhardt
To test this theory, researchers examined results of a housing lottery to measure the impact of relocation on slum residents. They found that offering subsidized suburban housing resulted in neither comprehensive take-up nor higher family income, suggesting that the benefits of improved housing were...

Temporary Labor Migration as Mitigation: Strategies for Managing Seasonal Famine in Bangladesh

Can monetary incentives induce rural farmers to migrate to cities and pursue seasonal labor opportunities during times of famine?