Blog

Bangladesh randomization lotteryCREDIT: Ishita Ahmed     Professor Angus Deaton deservedly won the Nobel Prize last month for his seminal work on micro-level data and measurement in economics. This has led to prominent news coverage of...

  The figure below comes from this paper, which attempts to replicate the finding that: 

Digital technology is rapidly changing the way we design and offer financial products. Consumers who were unreachable by brick-and-mortar banks can now access formal financial services quickly and cheaply through their mobile phones or prepaid cards...

   

By Colin Felsman IPA Colombia and J-PAL Latin America & Carribean, and Universidad de los Andes’ Center for the Study of Security and Drugs (CESED), recently convened policymakers, researchers, and civil society members to discuss proven...

By Jamie Zimmerman   Editor's note, this is a cross posting by CGAP, which originally appeared on their blog. IPA, CGAP and others will be partnering to address these issues in the upcoming Responsible Finance Forum.  

We had a blog post reflecting on the recent East Africa Evidence Summit and five ways to make evidence useful for policy makers.

Transparent sharing of data and analyses is crucial to good science and informs sound policy. The two organizations that we helped found, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) are committed to,...

In June, our Kenya team signed an MOU with the Kenyan government Vision 2030 program to collaborate on research outreach and public policy forums, particularly on themes related to the Sustainable Development Goals.

Editors note: This is a cross-post with NextBillion.

Innovations for Poverty Action was pleased to recently host a talk by Courtney Soderberg from the Center for Open Science (COS). COS aims to help researchers increase the transparency and reproducibility of their work.

Rwanda’s national economy relies heavily on coffee, which accounts for 30% of the country’s exports. Coffee washing businesses that dry the farmers' coffee beans before export are an important part of the supply chain behind those exports. Each year...

Until recently, achieving financial inclusion for the world’s unbanked poor was a pressing goal with perplexing obstacles. But in several countries across Asia, Africa and beyond, a possible solution is starting to emerge. Mobile payment systems...

In October 2014 IPA’s West Africa programs director woke up at 5AM to his cell phone ringing and a staffer reassuring him “the Parliament is on fire, but don’t worry, everybody’s fine, we’re going to work from home today.” In a blog post below,...

Researchers, policymakers, investors and practitioners joined forces to move forward in the dialogue around microcredit’s impact on the lives of the poor. Many themes emerged from the day, but perhaps the most salient came from Dean Karlan, who...

Until recently, the drive towards financial inclusion was commonly framed in terms of access. Yet as the explosion of digital financial services and simplified account opening procedures have begun to make financial services accessible to the poor,...

Inspired by previous years, it started out innocently enough: Hey @charlesjkenny are we doing #developmentvalentines again this year? — Timothy Ogden (@timothyogden) February 12, 2015

Mobile money is spreading at a rapid pace throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America. There are 203 million registered mobile money accounts worldwide and 256 mobile money services in operation, an impressive 100 percent increase over 2011. The...