Researchers evaluated the impact of Boston’s Summer Youth Employment Program, which uses a lottery to provide youth with part-time work and skills training during the summer, on students’ educational outcomes. The program significantly increased high school graduation rates among participating students, partly by reducing dropout and absenteeism rates.

Leveraging the increasingly widespread use of social media, researchers conducted a large-scale randomized evaluation to test the direct and indirect impact on electoral accountability of a nonpartisan information campaign delivered via Facebook ads during the 2018 Mexican municipal elections. Incumbent parties with negligible corruption levels saw their vote share increase by 6-7 percentage points in localities targeted by the Facebook ads.