RCT | VoxDev

Fostering negotiation skills in land and forest agreements

Negotiation training improves the ability of Liberian communities to strike beneficial deals around forest and land management by strengthening leaders’ ability to identify mutually beneficial, higher-value agreements. However, it does not substantia...

Agriculture

Darin Christensen Alexandra Hartman Cyrus Samii Alessandro Toppeta

Published

05.03.26

Credit card default is driven by job loss, not contract terms

Evidence from Mexico shows that job loss and employment instability – rather than high interest rates or minimum payment rules – are more important drivers of credit card default among new borrowers, suggesting that social protection may be more effe...

Finance

Sara G. Castellanos Diego Jiménez Hernández Aprajit Mahajan Eduardo Alcaraz Prous Enrique Seira

Published

20.03.26

Can home visits enhance the impact of cash transfers?

Adding home visits to a social safety net programme providing cash transfers and parenting information led to sustained improvements in child development, health behaviours, and education outcomes in Burkina Faso, whereas cash alone produced fewer la...

Social Protection

Richard Akresh Damien de Walque Harounan Kazianga Abigail Stocker

Published

26.02.26

When women can’t move freely and easily, they can’t participate in the labour force

Women’s participation in skills training Pakistan is constrained primarily by social and safety barriers, rather than preferences or the ability to monetise skills. Evidence from interventions that reduce these constraints shows that addressing mobil...

Labour Markets

Ali Cheema Asim Ijaz Khwaja Muhammad Farooq Naseer Jacob Shapiro

Published

19.02.26

Mismeasuring learning: Beware of psychometric test scores

High-frequency data from a large early childhood intervention in China indicates that skills develop through the emergence of qualitatively new abilities and stochastic fluctuations, rather than as higher levels of a fixed trait, challenging the prac...

Education

James Heckman Jin Zhou

Published

17.02.26

Why firms under-promote women – and how experimentation can fix it

In Bangladesh’s garment sector, firms often under-promote women because of biased beliefs and distorted learning about women’s managerial ability. However, temporary, low-risk trials can correct these beliefs and lead to sustained increases in female...

Labour Markets

Rocco Macchiavello Andreas Menzel Atonu Rabbani Christopher Woodruff

Published

05.02.26

Why waste segregation policies fail – and how training makes them work

Citizen training that builds households’ practical capability to segregate waste can deliver large, persistent and socially amplified improvements in waste management, making it a highly cost-effective climate policy in resource-constrained cities.

Energy & Environment

Swati Dhingra Stephen Machin

Published

29.01.26

Including women in commercial agriculture benefits the whole household

Formally including Ugandan women in commercial agriculture – through contract ownership or behaviour-change interventions – can increase women’s empowerment without reducing productivity, and with positive spillovers for household welfare and gender ...

Agriculture

Kate Ambler Kelly Jones Michael O’Sullivan

Published

27.01.26

Can school-based career guidance increase young women’s labour force participation?

A school-based career exploration programme in India raised female students’ aspirations and confidence by improving access to information and role models, but persistent structural constraints prevented these gains from translating into medium-term ...

Labour Markets

Ankush Asri Viola Asri Anke Hoeffler

Published

27.01.26