Researchers evaluated the academic impact of a “Cadillac” OST program in Washington, DC. Researchers found that the program increased students’ problem-solving and reading comprehension scores after two years.

Researchers designed a field study to identify how information and communication affect intra-household decisions. They found that Filipino spouses who don't control the household spending and savings decisions deposit money into their own accounts in private settings and commit it to consumption for themselves in public settings.

In Uganda, researchers evaluated whether offering financial education or group savings accounts to church-based youth groups increased savings. One year after the intervention ended, they found that total savings and income had increased among youth who were offered financial education, group savings accounts, or both education and group accounts.

In Bolivia, researchers investigated whether alarm boxes, designed to both remind people to save and to keep their savings safe, could have an effect on savings rates among microfinance clients.

Researchers examined the effect of a series of informational messages on participation in a recycling program in Peru. The messages sought to elicit pressures such as social norms, peer comparison, conformity, authority, and the environmental or social benefits to increased participation. They found that none of the messages had any effect on recycling. A parallel intervention, the provision of free plastic recycling bins, proved to be much more effective.

In southern and eastern Ghana, researchers evaluated two youth financial literacy programs to test their impact on savings, labor, academic performance, and financial decision-making. One program integrated financial and social education, while the second only offered financial education. Both programs had a positive impact on savings at school, but no impact on overall savings. Some evidence suggests that the program without the social education component also led children to work more.

Researchers examined whether small incentives and short-term goals could encourage Colombian loan officers to stop procrastinating. Under the new incentive structure, loan officers spread their work more evenly throughout each month, and they met a much greater percentage of their monthly targets.

Researchers evaluated the expansion of a rural financial services provider in Tamil Nadu, India in order to understand how access to financial services, information, and exposure to risk affect technology adoption and well-being among farming households.

In Nicaragua, researchers examined the impact of interacting with motivated community leaders on aspirations, household investment, and long-term living standards. They found that social interactions with these motivated community leaders increased households’ investments in education, nutrition, and income-generating activities, and improved households’ attitudes towards the future.

In Nicaragua, researchers examined the impact of a national conditional cash transfer (CCT) program on early childhood health and development. They found that the program caused substantial and lasting improvements in child health and development outcomes. However, it seems that program components other than, or in addition to, the cash transfers appear to drive these effects.

Researchers tested the effect of a basic CCT program, as well as two complementary interventions, on households’ vulnerability to irregular weather patterns. Providing households with vocational training or capital grants to generate non-agricultural income helps improve consumption and resilience to weather shocks.

Distributing water cisterns in northeast Brazil led to fewer requests for private benefits from local politicians and fewer votes for incumbent mayors, who typically have more resources to engage in clientelism. Marco Gonzalez-Navarro and J-PAL's Latin America & Caribbean office are now working with the Climate Policy Initiative to support the Ministry of Social Development to design and implement an evaluation of the second deployment of cisterns.

In Uganda, researchers studied the demand for rainwater storage devices, the effectiveness of various marketing strategies in promoting them, and their impact on indicators such as school attendance and women’s participation in the labor market.

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of lottery-based financial awards given to young individuals who tested STI-negative on their likelihood of contracting HIV and engaging in risky sexual behavior. The intervention provided frequent rewards at short intervals to bring the benefits of safe sex closer to the present and used a lottery design to try to target higher-risk individuals. Lottery-based financial incentives reduced the prevalence and incidence of HIV by 12 percent and 21 percent respectively, and their impact was largest among individuals with a high tolerance for risk.

In Bihar, India, researchers examined how double fortified salt could be most effectively priced, marketed, and distributed, in order to have the greatest impact on a range of health, education, and economic outcomes.