Researchers partnered with a large payday lender in Indiana to conduct an evaluation to better understand consumers’ decision-making. The results suggest that average borrowers can anticipate their probability of taking loans in the future. However, people focus too much on the present when making decisions about payday loans, a behavior that they would like to change.

Researchers introduced a randomized information intervention to see if providing information on how different allocation methods work would shift the preferences of beneficiaries of a Nepalese land allocation program. On average, the information intervention did not change preferences for how land should be allocated, and about half of participants still preferred allocation methods that were less likely to match them with their desired plot of land.

Researchers are evaluating the effects of providing farmers with access to maize processing services that could improve maize quality on their input decisions.

Researchers partnered with financial providers in the United Kingdom to evaluate the effectiveness of various disclosure designs aimed at supporting consumers’ financial decisions across savings products. Although most disclosures increased the number of consumers that switched to higher-yielding savings account, the effects were relatively modest, even among those who received the most effectively designed disclosure and those with substantial financial incentives to switch. These findings suggest that low attention limits the potential of financial disclosures and that disclosures need to be more explicitly designed to better capture consumers' attention.

Researchers worked with an airline to test the impact of different types of information and incentives on pilots’ productivity, as measured by pilots’ implementation of fuel-saving practices. Provision of personalized targets for achieving these fuel-saving practices led pilots to implement them more frequently without increasing flight delays.

Researchers are conducting a randomized evaluation in Chile to study the impact of altering high school students’ beliefs about the returns of college degrees on their decisions to invest in college preparation and which program they choose.

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.

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.

Researchers partnered with the Punjab Safe Cities Authority to evaluate how to improve citizen’s access to and experience with police services.

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 randomly assigned automobile manufacturing workers to provide monthly feedback on their managers to measure the impact of feedback on worker productivity, turnover, and job satisfaction in China. Team-level productivity was higher, turnover was lower, and workers’ happiness increased when workers could provide feedback on their managers.

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.

In Lilongwe, Malawi, researchers provided applicants for a health interviewer job with a random chance of receiving a back-up job, regardless of their success in being hired as a health interviewer, to measure (a) the impact of uncertainty on job search performance and (b) the returns to work experience on future employment and earnings. Job seekers performed better, despite lower job search effort, when they had higher job certainty. Job seekers who received a back-up job through the program had significantly higher daily wages for at least eight months following the program.