Researchers evaluated the impact of gender-based discrimination on female teleworkers’ productivity in online sales interactions with customers in Africa. When a customer chat representative had a female-sounding name, it led to significantly fewer purchases, and slower and more reserved reactions from customers.

In many countries around the world, there is growing concern that certain groups of people may face job market discrimination based on physical appearance. To test this theory, researchers randomly submitted resumes with photos of people with varying levels of attractiveness to measure the effect on prospective employer interest. They found that, on average, resumes with attractive photos were 36 percent more likely to receive a callback than resumes with unattractive photos.

Researchers are evaluating the impact of providing a gender-specific managerial training program on career advancement prospects for women and workplace productivity.

Researchers randomly assigned co-supervisors to production lines to evaluate the impact of exposing garment factory workers and supervisors to women managers on factory productivity, supervisor retention, and attitudes toward women. Several months after the intervention, there was no difference in productivity between lines managed by women and men, a higher rate of women promoted to supervisor relative to comparison factories, and more accurate ratings of women’s managerial abilities.

Microenterprises often struggle to survive and grow after their initial start-up. A key issue for policymakers is understanding how to best encourage the survival and growth of resource-constrained firms by using policy tools like unrestricted cash grants and conditional transfers of materials or equipment. Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation of male- and female-owned firms in Ghana to identify and distinguish the impacts of cash and in-kind transfers on the profits of microenterprises. Results indicate that the impacts of cash and in-kind transfers vary according to firm size, profitability, and gender, where female-owned, high-profit firms experienced substantial growth with the support of in-kind grants.

Researchers found that, for female sewing workers in the largest private garment exporter in India, participating in a training program improved their soft skills and productivity and the firm experienced high financial returns.

In Sri Lanka, researchers provided wage subsidies to randomly chosen microenterprises to determine if they would hire more workers, and whether the additional labor would benefit such firms. The study found that while firms increased employment during the subsidy period, there was no lasting impact of the subsidies on employment, profitability, or sales.

Researchers conducted an evaluation to test the impact of offering a high-amenity diagnostic consultation for cataracts at different prices on uptake of an underutilized service—cataract surgery—in Mexico. Lower prices for the high-amenity consultation increased exposure to amenities, which ultimately boosted surgery take-up.

Researchers are partnering with the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) to identify barriers to a wider market for consulting and training in Bangladesh by offering high-quality manufacturing training services at randomly-assigned price points and covering different topics. They find that factories and managers are unwilling to take-up high-quality training services more as a result of high production pressures than as a result of high prices, and that there is higher demand for training to improve production planning and quality than for training on human or social resources.

Researchers are conducting a randomized evaluation to test the impact of a PES program that offers financial rewards to paddy farmers for reducing burning of crop residue (or “stubble”) on stubble burning in Punjab, India.