Researchers examined the impact of doubling teacher salary on student and teacher performance in Indonesia. This intervention had some positive effects on teachers: they reported higher levels of satisfaction with their jobs and less financial stress and were less likely to have a second job. However, doubling teacher salary had no effect on teacher knowledge, student test scores, or self-reported teacher attendance.

Researchers evaluated and compared the impact of two different job search assistance policies on employment outcomes for young job seekers in Addis Ababa. Helping youth signal their skills to employers improved their earnings and job duration four years later, especially for youth who would usually fare the worst in the labor market. Reducing the cost of job search through a transportation subsidy improved the likelihood of having a formal job in the short run, but had no impact after four years.

In Liberia, researchers tested the effect of an intensive agricultural training program that also provided agricultural supplies and psychosocial counseling on employment activities, income, and socio-political integration. Fourteen months after the program, participants spent more time working in agriculture and less on illicit activities, and their income rose as a result.

Can facilitating relationships between small- and medium-sized businesses help them grow? In Jiangxi Province, China, researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to study the impact of business relationships on firm performance. Monthly meetings among firms increased sales, profits, and other business outcomes, mainly by facilitating learning and partnership development.

Researchers evaluated the impact of providing small behavioral tools, including a goal-setting website, text message reminders, and social rewards, to parents to encourage their participation in the Parents And Children Together (PACT) program. These behavioral tools more than doubled parents’ reading efforts, with the greatest effect among parents who scored lower on a test that measured parents’ patience levels.

Researchers studied the impact of a summer jobs program in Chicago on crime, education, and employment. The program dramatically reduced violent-crime arrests, including in the following school year, though it did not influence schooling or formal employment, and may have increased property crime in future years. Using a machine learning technique, the researchers find that the youth with the largest improvements in employment are not the disconnected youth usually targeted by employment programs.

Many financial products such as 401k plans have been designed to help US consumers overcome limited self-control and limited attention in order to reach their savings goals. However, reaching low-income consumers with such behaviorally-designed financial products can be difficult. In the Bronx, NY, researchers evaluated ways to encourage “impulse savings” at a check casher, testing how free savings accounts coupled with prompts and incentives to make deposits—offered at the moment when people have cash in hand—impacted savings behavior and customer loyalty. Formal savings accounts provide a secure and structured way for households to build assets and plan for the future, but in 2013, 9.6 million Americans lacked a formal savings account. Researchers evaluated the impact of providing reminder messages and incentives to deposit into a free savings account on clients’ savings behavior and customer loyalty.

Researchers are evaluating the impact of a conditional cash transfer and community worker program on beneficiary wellbeing.

A study on parents’ demand for conditionality in a Brazilian cash transfer program revealed that parents are willing to pay to for the conditionality in order to monitor their children’s school attendance.

During periods of high electricity use that strain the grid, electricity customers do not have any reason to conserve because they pay a fixed price per kilowatt hour of power. In this study, the researcher evaluated the impact on electricity usage of a real-time pricing scheme, which charges households different prices throughout the day based on fluctuating wholesale costs. Households charged according to real-time pricing consumed less electricity in response to higher prices, primarily due to lower consumption during peak times.

Entrepreneurs in developing countries face a number of barriers to expanding their businesses and employing more workers, including limited access to credit and other financial services. In Colombia, researchers are investigating whether a regulatory reform that allows small and medium enterprises to use moveable assets as collateral can increase their access to finance.

Microenterprises often struggle to survive and grow after their initial start-up. A key issue for policymakers is understanding how to best encourage the survival and growth of resource-constrained firms by using policy tools like unrestricted cash grants and conditional transfers of materials or equipment. Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation of male- and female-owned firms in Ghana to identify and distinguish the impacts of cash and in-kind transfers on the profits of microenterprises. Results indicate that the impacts of cash and in-kind transfers vary according to firm size, profitability, and gender, where female-owned, high-profit firms experienced substantial growth with the support of in-kind grants.

Researchers partnered with Thomson-Reuters to evaluate whether receiving information through SMS messages generated economic benefits for farmers in India. Results showed no effect of the intervention on prices, crop losses, or cultivation practices. However, increased access to information seems to have influenced the places where farmers decided to sell their output.