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.

Employers in the low-skill and entry-level job market often lack information on job seekers’ abilities, which can reduce interview invitations and job offers for job seekers, especially for disadvantaged groups such as women. Researchers partnered with the South African Department of Labour to evaluate the impact of reference letters on employer response rates and on employment outcomes for unemployed young people.

There is a growing body of evidence on the efficacy of SMS reminders to encourage banking clients to save more. Researchers in the Dominican Republic partnered with savings and credit institution Banco Unión to conduct two randomized evaluations of tailored SMS reminders.

Researchers evaluated the impact of offering either subsidized vocational training to unemployed youth or subsidized apprenticeships for firms on youth employment and earning outcomes in urban Uganda. Both forms of subsidized training led to greater skill accumulation, higher employment rates, and higher earnings for workers; however, the gains were larger for vocational trainees and were sustained over time.

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.

At a community college in Fort Worth, Texas, researchers evaluated a comprehensive case management program called Stay the Course, which included mentoring and emergency financial assistance (EFA), and measured the impact of these services on students’ academic outcomes, including persistence in school, degree completion, credits earned, and cumulative GPA. They found that students who received a combination of case management and EFA services were significantly more likely to stay in school and to graduate, and that these effects were particularly pronounced for women.

Researchers are partnering with the Savanna Farmers Marketing Company (SFMC) to evaluate the impact of a contract farming program that encourages the uptake of new technologies on the adoption of high yielding seeds in northern Ghana.

As in many other developing countries, children under the age of five in rural Ghana often fail to reach their developmental potential. Researchers there are partnering with the organization Lively Minds to evaluate the impact of a low-cost, play-based learning program on early childhood cognitive development. Preliminary results suggest that the Lively Minds program is an effective and potentially scalable way to improve children’s cognitive and socio-emotional development, health, and school readiness.

Researchers evaluated the impact of a low-cost computer-based intervention providing information about the brain’s potential to change and grow on students’ beliefs in their abilities to learn and their subsequent effort in school. Results showed that providing this information improved students’ perseverance and academic performance, driven largely by impacts among the lowest achieving students.

Researchers introduced an educational program focused on teaching patience to evaluate the impact on students’ decision-making and willingness to wait for a future reward over the present. Students assigned to the program demonstrated more patient decision-making, which persisted almost three years after the program. Students were also less likely to receive low behavior grades.

Researchers studied the effects of a credit card interest rate increase among low-income subprime borrowers in the UK to assess its impact on credit card demand, overall indebtedness, and borrowers’ ability to pay. They found that following the rate hike, subprime borrowers who appeared to be more financially stable reduced their demand for new credit by 42 percent more than their counterparts who did not receive the rate increase. Overall, borrowers did not reduce their indebtedness and incurred higher interest charges, resulting in higher revenues for the lender and a larger debt burden for borrowers.