Researchers are conducting a randomized evaluation to test the impact of being offered a summer job through Philadelphia’s WorkReady program on outcomes related to criminal justice involvement, employment, and education.

Making electricity and learning materials in students’ native language more widely available in schools may be beneficial to student learning, but existing evidence is sparse. Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of school electrification, delivered alongside mixed-language digital educational materials, on student exam scores and pass rates. They found that neither increased electricity access nor learning material in their native language improved students’ academic performance.

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation on measuring the impact of celebrity Twitter endorsement for a child immunization campaign on the public’s opinion and behavior towards immunization. Celebrity endorsement increased Twitter engagement with the immunization campaign, primarily when celebrities authored messages themselves and did not explicitly cite credible public health sources. Celebrity endorsement led to increased communication and knowledge about health behaviors in individuals’ communities, though there was no impact on an individual’s immunization decisions for their children.

Billions of dollars in government funds go missing each year due to corruption, but there is limited consensus on how best to tackle this global challenge. Researchers leveraged data from Brazil’s long-standing anticorruption program, which holds public lotteries to randomly select municipalities for audit. These government audits, aimed at uncovering the misuse of public resources, reduced corruption by promoting both electoral and judicial accountability.

Researchers in Colombia partnered with Colpensiones, Colombia’s public pension fund administrator, to test the effect of redesigning pension statements on the beneficiaries' understanding of the information presented and the identification of potential errors in their statements.