In the United States, researchers evaluated the impact of the mandatory-participation bundled payment model for hospitals and explored which hospitals were incentivized to opt in to bundled payments after the model was later made voluntary. The mandatory-participation bundled payment program produced modest reductions in Medicare claims, but the voluntary program produced smaller declines in Medicare claims than if the mandatory program had continued.

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation in East Java, Indonesia to investigate the impact of the level and transparency of financial incentives on the take-up of these new banking services. They found that larger incentives caused an increase in take-up, but only when the incentives were not publicized among the community. When incentives are made public, higher incentives instead have no effect on take-up, despite greater agent effort.

In Kenya, researchers introduced a messaging campaign on matatus (local buses) to encourage individuals to speak up against reckless driving and reduce road accidents rates. Placing these stickers in the passenger area of matatus decreased insurance claims rates, average speed, and number of road accidents per year.

In partnership with the Hyderabad City Police (HCP), researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of a police patrolling program aimed at improving women’s safety on the frequency of sexual harassment and women’s freedom to move around in public spaces. The presence of uniformed officers in public spaces reduced instances of severe forms of sexual harassment and led to fewer women relocating from the patrolled areas.

Researchers partnered with the Chilean Ministry of Education to evaluate the impact of pre-packaged classroom materials and standardized directions for teachers on teaching quality and student learning. The program improved student learning outcomes substantially, with equal benefits for both boys and girls, and particularly positive impacts for children from higher-income backgrounds.

Building on previous research, researchers in this study evaluated the impact of several targeted instruction programs on the learning outcomes of primary school students in Ghana’s public schools. Researchers found significant improvements in numeracy and literacy on average; of the four interventions, in-school and after-school remedial lessons delivered by Teacher Community Assistants had the largest impact on pupil achievement.

Researchers evaluated the long-run effects of temporary contact between individuals from different regions during military service on interregional attitudes and national identity sentiments among former Spanish male conscripts. Overall, conscription outside of one’s region of origin led to positive and long-lasting effects on interregional sentiments, and increased the sense of national identity among conscripts from regions with strong secessionists movements.

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of life skills training and mentoring on dropout rates and non-cognitive skills among girls in India. Their evidence suggests that the intervention is successful in developing stronger life skills including increased agency, more equitable gender norms, and stronger socio-emotional support.

Researchers in France studied whether government-provided recruiting services would impact firms’ job postings and hiring by lowering recruiting costs. The recruiting services decreased firms’ hiring costs and increased firms’ job postings and hiring, including much sought-after permanent-contract hires.

Researchers at the Lujeri Tea Estates in Malawi evaluated the impact of exposure to more, less, or equally productive peers on tea harvester productivity. They found that increasing the productivity of a worker’s peers meaningfully increased worker productivity, measured in kilograms of tea picked. This result was driven largely by women, whose productivity gains were much larger than those of men.

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 evaluating the impact of providing different types of information about the health risks of Covid-19 on individuals’ risky behavior among diabetic and hypertensive individuals in Tamil Nadu, India, with special attention to de-biasing over-optimism about personal health risk.

Researchers studied the impact of the gender of communicators on the effects of a program to train farmers to communicate information on agricultural technology to other farmers. While there was no gender gap in communicators’ ability to acquire, retain, and use the information about the technology, other farmers were less willing to learn from female communicators. In spite of this, other farmers learned just as much about the technology and experienced similar farm yields when the communicator role was reserved for women.

In Bangladesh, researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test whether helping selected farmers set up demonstration plots could increase awareness in the community about a new rice variety by triggering information exchanges through new interactions. Demonstration plots comparing new versus traditional seed varieties improved farmers’ knowledge about the new rice variety. The new interactions induced by the demonstration plots were most effective for farmers who were least socially connected before the intervention was delivered.