Researchers partnered with USAID to study the impact of Evidence-Based Medicine programs on changing family planning providers’ biases against injectable contraceptives. Overall, researchers found no change in provider practices and self-reported prescriptions.

Researchers evaluated the impact of direct mail and phone calls on the turnout of Black voters in ten different states. Neither mailings nor phone calls significantly impacted voter turnout, perhaps due to the large volume of political messaging that voters had to navigate.

In Ohio, researchers tested the effect of an informational mailing on the number of tax filers claiming the political contribution tax credit. They found that the campaign generated a moderate increase in the number of individuals claiming the credit, but at a cost of over US$2000 per filer.

Researchers designed and piloted a program called Borrow Less Tomorrow (BoLT) that took a behavioral approach to debt reduction, combining an accelerated loan repayment schedule with peer support and reminders. Results from a sample of free tax-preparation clients in Tulsa, United States suggest a strong demand for debt reduction: 41 percent of those offered BoLT used it to make a plan to accelerate debt repayment. The results also offer suggestive evidence that the BoLT package reduced credit card debt.

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation in rural Peru to assess the impact of providing a workshop designed to foster trust in banks on participants’ levels of trust, financial literacy, and saving and account use patterns of cash transfer recipients. Overall, participants who were offered the financial trust workshop demonstrated higher levels of trust in financial institutions and raised savings levels.

Researchers evaluated the impact of teaching socio-emotional skills to schoolchildren on their emotional well-being, learning, life satisfaction, and long-run labor outcomes.

In partnership with Family Bank of Kenya, researchers evaluated the impact of providing free ATM card to couples on savings account use. Providing ATM cards significantly increased the use of savings accounts owned by men and joint accounts on average, but had no effect on accounts owned by women or men that had less bargaining power than their spouses.

A randomized evaluation in rural Kenya found that offering higher short-term interest rates on a savings account substantially increased bank account use two and a half years for after the promotional rate ended. Offering the interest rate promotion on individual bank accounts also increased household income via growth in entrepreneurship, while offering the promotion on joint bank accounts increased investment in household goods and led to greater spousal agreement on financial matters.

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of a deposit collection service on the amount of savings and the source of those savings. In a follow-up evaluation, researchers introduced design tweaks to test the impact of reducing collection costs on individuals’ savings behavior. Both versions of the intervention led to increased savings.

Vote-buying and vote-selling can obstruct the democratic process, yet they remain pervasive in many developing democracies. Researchers asked voters in the Philippines to make a simple, unenforceable promise not to accept money from politicians or to promise to vote according to their conscience, even if they do accept money, to test the impact of promises on voters’ behavior. Researchers found that a majority of respondents made promises not to sell their votes. These promises significantly reduced vote-selling, cutting the number of people who sold their votes by 11 percentage points in the smallest-stakes election, but was not effective in the mayoral election with higher pay-outs.

Researchers tested the effect of seven different information disclosure messages on credit card clients of a large Mexican bank and found that non-standard information disclosures reduced debt levels and lowered delinquency more effectively than legally mandated disclosures.