BlogNews

News, ideas, and analysis from J-PAL staff and affiliated professors. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive monthly email updates.

Manishah Shah

Affiliate spotlight: Manisha Shah on her research on adolescent sexual and reproductive health

Friday, February 2, 2018, by Charlotte Goff and Manisha Shah

J-PAL affiliated professor Manisha Shah is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her primary research questions and teaching interests lie at the intersection of applied microeconomics, health, and education.

How did you become interested in development economics?

My childhood experiences in developing countries probably had a lot to do with it. I still remember my first trip to India... Read More

Using evidence to improve open government initiatives

Thursday, January 25, 2018, by Aulia Anggita Larasati

One way that open government initiatives can improve service delivery is through increasing transparency—for instance, by providing information about social programs and citizens’ eligibility and rights under such programs. Read More

Mary Ann Bates, executive director of J-PAL North America, speaks at a recent TEDx event.

It improved lives elsewhere. Will it here?

Tuesday, January 23, 2018, by Mary Ann Bates

TED is about ideas worth spreading. But which ideas are worth spreading? Ideas from where? When we try to solve some of the biggest challenges our societies face, our first instinct is to look at what worked elsewhere. But can we really teach math like they do in Singapore? Or design a health program like they have in Sweden? Read More

Using a massive open online course (MOOC) to build a culture of evidence in Brazil

Thursday, January 18, 2018, by Anna Mortara

One of our fundamental goals at J-PAL Latin America & Caribbean (LAC) is building government capacity to generate and use scientific evidence in order to achieve more effective public policies. But are policymakers and civil servants in Latin America interested in learning more about these topics? Last year we saw evidence that in Brazil, the answer is yes.

In partnership with ENAP (the National School of... Read More

Increasing the use of data and evidence in real-world policy: Stories from J-PAL’s Government Partnership Initiative

Tuesday, January 16, 2018, by Samantha Carter and Claire Walsh

At J-PAL, we often talk about the importance of using evidence to design and implement effective policies and programs, and many governments are working to make it a priority. But what does this look like in practice? How can we best support governments in finding and applying the evidence they need to make informed decisions?

We manage the Government Partnership Initiative (GPI), a J-PAL fund that supports... Read More

Meet our new executive director

Thursday, January 11, 2018, by Eliza Keller

Iqbal Dhaliwal is the new executive director of J-PAL, succeeding Rachel Glennerster, who has joined DFID as its chief economist. Earlier Iqbal was deputy executive director, and prior to that, founding director of J-PAL's policy group. Before joining the organization in 2009 he was a director in an economics consulting firm and an official in India’s senior civil service, where he worked on policy formulation and program implementation. ... Read More

New affiliated professors join the J-PAL network

Thursday, January 11, 2018, by J-PAL

Eight oustanding researchers recently joined J-PAL’s academic network: Peter Bergman and Eric Verhoogen at Columbia University, Saurabh Bhargava at Carnegie Mellon University, Clément de Chaisemartin at University of California, Santa Barbara, Will Dobbie at Princeton University, Bill Evans at University of Notre Dame, Nathaniel Hendren at Harvard University, and Wes Yin at University of California, Los Angeles. Their varied research interests range from children’s language acquisition to racial bias in... Read More

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