The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Anchored by a network of more than 1,100 researchers at universities around the world, J-PAL conducts randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty.
The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Anchored by a network of more than 1,100 researchers at universities around the world, J-PAL conducts randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty.
Our affiliated professors are based at over 130 universities and conduct randomized evaluations around the world to design, evaluate, and improve programs and policies aimed at reducing poverty. They set their own research agendas, raise funds to support their evaluations, and work with J-PAL staff on research, policy outreach, and training.
Our Board of Directors, which is composed of J-PAL affiliated professors and senior management, provides overall strategic guidance to J-PAL, our sector programs, and regional offices.
We host events around the world and online to share results and policy lessons from randomized evaluations, to build new partnerships between researchers and practitioners, and to train organizations on how to design and conduct randomized evaluations, and use evidence from impact evaluations.
Browse news articles about J-PAL and our affiliated professors, read our press releases and monthly global and research newsletters, and connect with us for media inquiries.
Based at leading universities around the world, our experts are economists who use randomized evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty. Connect with us for all media inquiries and we'll help you find the right person to shed insight on your story.
J-PAL is based at MIT in Cambridge, MA and has seven regional offices at leading universities in Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, North America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
J-PAL is based at MIT in Cambridge, MA and has seven regional offices at leading universities in Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, North America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
Our global office is based at the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It serves as the head office for our network of seven independent regional offices.
Led by affiliated professors, J-PAL sectors guide our research and policy work by conducting literature reviews; by managing research initiatives that promote the rigorous evaluation of innovative interventions by affiliates; and by summarizing findings and lessons from randomized evaluations and producing cost-effectiveness analyses to help inform relevant policy debates.
Led by affiliated professors, J-PAL sectors guide our research and policy work by conducting literature reviews; by managing research initiatives that promote the rigorous evaluation of innovative interventions by affiliates; and by summarizing findings and lessons from randomized evaluations and producing cost-effectiveness analyses to help inform relevant policy debates.
How do policies affecting private sector firms impact productivity gaps between higher-income and lower-income countries? How do firms’ own policies impact economic growth and worker welfare?
How can we identify effective policies and programs in low- and middle-income countries that provide financial assistance to low-income families, insuring against shocks and breaking poverty traps?
J-PAL North America is committed to testing strategies and developing resources to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion among their staff, network of researchers and partners, and underrepresented scholars in the economics field.
J-PAL North America’s Evidence Portal provides a snapshot of the research in North America by J-PAL affiliates and invited researchers across various social policy areas related to poverty alleviation. To date, J-PAL affiliated researchers have conducted over 265 ongoing or completed randomized...
How can we design more effective social programmes across Europe? J-PAL affiliated researchers focus on the contribution made by randomised evaluations to the development of high-quality evidence for informing social policy.
As part of the "Development Methodologies" Chair held by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, a summer school for African researchers, project leaders and other partners will be organised from July 7 to 11, 2025 in Dakar, on the campus of the African Center for Higher Studies in Management (CESAG).
J-PAL Europe fosters the generation of new rigorous evaluation in Europe by funding research projects designed to expand the evidence base in key thematic areas and by partnering with governments and organisations to institutionalise efforts to use rigorous evidence in the design of more effective...
The J-PAL Europe office is based in Paris at the Paris School of Economics. We recruit new staff members to work with us on one or more of our four teams: the Policy and Communications team, the Research team, the Training team and the Finance and Operations team. We also run an internship programme...
Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) reward landholders and communities for protecting nature, with research showing that well-designed programs can slow deforestation and enhance ecosystems at low cost. However, traditional outcome-based models often overlook communities' ways of life, limiting...
Esther Duflo presents the Global Climate Grand Bargain a practical, fair framework linking mitigation, adaptation, and compensation. The talk outlines global carbon pricing, automatic transfers for vulnerable households, and locally driven adaptation that makes climate action advance equity and...