In partnership with Melchia Investments, a private Ghanaian technology company, researchers are conducting a pilot randomized evaluation to identify the effectiveness of a new tax collection technology in increasing property tax revenues for local governments.

In many countries around the world, there is growing concern that certain groups of people may face job market discrimination based on physical appearance. To test this theory, researchers randomly submitted resumes with photos of people with varying levels of attractiveness to measure the effect on prospective employer interest. They found that, on average, resumes with attractive photos were 36 percent more likely to receive a callback than resumes with unattractive photos.

In Kazakhstan, researchers tested whether offering youth community service grants and training impacted their level of community engagement, pro-social behavior, life skills, and labor market outcomes. Engaging youth in civic service and/or training had little to no effect on these outcomes one-year post-program, with some evidence of negative training effects on labor market outcomes.

In Mozambique, researchers are evaluating the GBV and schooling impacts of implementing a GBV curriculum targeted at students.

To investigate which strategies are most effective at preventing drunk driving and reducing traffic accidents, researchers partnered with the Rajasthan Police in India to evaluate an anti-drunk driving program using sobriety testing checkpoints. Overall, the anti-drunk driving program was effective in reducing traffic deaths and accidents, with these reductions driven entirely by police stations that implemented surprise checkpoints.

In India, researchers leveraged a randomized evaluation of the distribution of a new seed variety to assess how the new seed spread within communities and social groups. They found that local social structures, such as the jati-caste system, influenced the extent of seed adoption. In particular, sharing of seeds between farmers within a village occurred more rapidly and extensively in villages with a relatively more homogenous social structure.

Labor movements can improve workers’ lives but face great difficulty in getting workers to agree on common goals and take collective actions. In garment factory workers’ group discussions on minimum wage policies in Myanmar, researchers randomly included union leaders to study whether the presence of union leaders affected workers’ preferences and behavior. Union leaders’ presence at group discussions increased the degree of agreement between the workers’ and unions’ preferred wage levels, and made it more likely that workers participated in a subsequent group activity, suggesting that union leaders both helped form workers’ consensus and motivated them to take collective actions. Researchers found evidence that union leaders’ influence on these outcomes came from the leaders’ ability and skills rather than formal title or social ties.

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of leveraging social networks to disseminate information about two technologies, pit planting and “Chinese composting,” on farmers’ adoption of these methods. Providing performance-based incentives to peer farmers had the biggest effect on technology adoption.

Most eligible workers who receive the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), a cash transfer program geared toward low-income workers with dependents, receive the credit as an annual lump sum payment, even though they are eligible to receive the credit in the form of monthly disbursements throughout the year (referred to as the Advance EITC). To test whether or not workers might benefit from receiving the EITC in the form of monthly payments rather than a lump sum, researchers reduced potential enrollment barriers to encourage workers to participate in the Advance EITC.