Researchers conducted two randomized evaluations to test 1) the impact of providing public spending information on voter attitudes and 2) the impact of cash transfers on parental preferences for education.

Vocational training is often advocated as a means of maintaining and improving the qualifications of the labor force. However, it is also possible that time spent in vocational training simply displaces time spent working or looking for employment. Researchers evaluated the impact of a vocational training program in Denmark on employment and wages. They found that vocational training temporarily increased unemployment among participants, and had no significant impact on wages.

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation in rural Peru to assess the impact of providing a workshop designed to foster trust in banks on participants’ levels of trust, financial literacy, and saving and account use patterns of cash transfer recipients. Overall, participants who were offered the financial trust workshop demonstrated higher levels of trust in financial institutions and raised savings levels.

Researchers present results from six randomized control trials of an integrated approach to improve livelihoods among the very poor. The impact on the poor households lasted at least a year after all implementation ended.

Researchers evaluated the impact of enabling Filipino migrants to label remittances for education on the amount of money they sent home. Labeling remittances as funds to be used for education raised the amount of money migrants sent home substantially (over 15 percent).

In Ghana, researchers evaluated the impact of performance pay on worker productivity. They found that neither individual nor group incentives impacted productivity, work quality, or firm profitability.

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to measure the impact of unconditional price discounts and price discounts conditional on including a woman on formal purchased land titles in traditionally informal settlements in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Price discounts increased demand for formal land titles, and that demand increased by the same amount whether or not the discount was conditional on including a woman on the title.

Researchers are testing whether delivering cash through governmental institutions or through an existing MFI is more cost-effective and easier to scale-up.

Researchers evaluated a multi-faceted approach aimed at improving the long-term incomes of the ultra-poor. 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 costs.

The researcher evaluated the impact of a sexual harassment training on the incidence of sexual harassment, opposite sex relationships, and attitudes and beliefs towards sexual harassment in India. Overall, the training reduced extreme forms of sexual harassment in the short run and intermediate forms of harassment in the long run, likely by changing men’s beliefs about others' attitudes to sexual harassment. The training also reduced opposite sex romantic relationships between classmates.

Following a series of evaluations of the Graduation approach in 15 other countries, researchers are now evaluating the impact of the Graduation approach on the livelihoods of the ultra-poor in Upper Egypt.

A lack of access to finance can impede the potential for growth among small firms. To meet this finance gap and to encourage high-growth entrepreneurship, governments and multilateral agencies throughout the developing world often directly fund small and medium enterprises. Governments, however, have little guidance when it comes to choosing the firms with growth potential, and making sure that limited funds are targeted where they will spur the most growth. In Mexico, researchers are evaluating the impact of providing government funding to small enterprises, and whether different types of selection panels are more effective at selecting firms with high growth potential.

Researchers evaluated the impact of providing easy-to-remember and easy-to-adopt rules of thumb to microentrepreneurs in India in order to help improve their businesses performance.