January 04, 2023 Ana Tamayo Almost a decade ago, right after college, Jackie Namubiru, an anthropologist by training, began her career with IPA. She started as a mobilizer, encouraging people to participate in an impact evaluation that IPA was implementing in her home district Masindi in Uganda. Five years later, she was a key member of the research team that rigorously evaluated  Becoming One, a program designed to prevent and reduce intimate partner violence (IPV,sometimes known as “domestic violence”). Jackie Namubiru piloting content for the group sessions with Religious Leaders ..read more

January 02, 2023 Rebecca Rouse The Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) Tanzania team was honored to host a field visit to Dar es Salaam’s Makumbusho Market during a recent visit to Tanzania by H.M. Queen Máxima of the Netherlands in her capacity as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA). The goal of UNSGSA Queen Máxima’s visit was to better understand how digital payments are being used in Tanzania, the costs associated with them, and their potential to help small businesses and other users. In her role as UNSGSA, Queen Máxima spoke with en ..read more

January 02, 2023 Rebecca Rouse The Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) Tanzania team was honored to host a field visit to Dar es Salaam’s Makumbusho Market during a recent visit to Tanzania by H.M. Queen Máxima of the Netherlands in her capacity as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA). The goal of UNSGSA Queen Máxima’s visit was to better understand how digital payments are being used in Tanzania, the costs associated with them, and their potential to help small businesses and other users. In her role as UNSGSA, Queen Máxima spoke with en ..read more

December 05, 2022 Editor's note: This cross-post originally appeared on the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development Blog. Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), BRAC University, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), creating a collaboration to use high-quality research to support evidence-informed development solutions in Bangladesh. IPA is a global research and policy organization with a presence in 20 countries across Asia, Africa, and the Americas. IPA works with partners to generate and use rigo ..read more

November 17, 2022 Phillip Roessler Mark Walsh In 2021, the World Bank Findex survey found a large gap between the use of digital retail payments in high-income countries and low and middle-income countries (LMICs). This gap cannot be completely explained by differences in access to digital financial tools across countries. For example, Tanzania (like other East African economies) outpaces many high-income countries in terms of its citizens' use of mobile money to send and receive domestic remittances. But when it comes to retail payments, most Tanzanians keep their phones in their pockets a ..read more

November 15, 2022 ### FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 15, 2022 WASHINGTON, D.C. --Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) celebrates today’s announcement of Dr. Dean Karlan’s appointment as Chief Economist for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). As the USAID Chief Economist, Karlan will serve as USAID’s principal economist and top expert on economic policy and analysis. In this role, Dr. Karlan will use insights from randomized controlled trials and other empirical assessments to support USAID in making evidence-based decisions and in achieving a range of development o ..read more

November 14, 2022 ### FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 14, 2022 WASHINGTON, D.C.- Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is thrilled to announce a gift of $8 million in unrestricted support from novelist and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. Ms. Scott announced her donation on Medium today as part of almost $1 billion in gifts to 343 organizations that she states are “supporting the voices and opportunities of people from underserved communities.” IPA will use Ms. Scott’s investment to further its mission of discovering and promoting effective solutions to global poverty problems. Guided by its Str ..read more

November 08, 2022 Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is delighted to share that we have recently formed a partnership with The Research in Color Foundation (RIC). RIC is a 501c(3) nonprofit organization that is dedicated to increasing the number of Ph.D. students of color in economics and economics-adjacent disciplines and amplifying meaningful economic and policy research about and by communities of color. As part of this collaboration, IPA will financially sponsor two mentees and one early career Ph.D. student of color interested in development economics and policy. These recipients will ..read more

August 08, 2022 John Branch Jeffrey Mosenkis   People often struggle to follow through on things they want to accomplish. When we try to do something like quit smoking, save money, or exercise, many of us have short-term desires that conflict with our long-term goals. To address this, economists have designed and evaluated a wide range of commitment devices. Commitment devices are strategies that allow people to voluntarily “lock themselves in” to a course of action in the future that they might otherwise have trouble following through on. But when designing studies around human fai ..read more

July 18, 2022 Yuna Liang Marieliz Maines Rafe Mazer Getting a refund can be the stuff of nightmares—long wait times, hidden fine print exceptions you did not read, or multiple calls to follow-up. But the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’s (BSP)'s new chatbot, “BOB” (BSP Online Buddy), could change this for consumers in the Philippines. BOB lets consumers file complaints against BSP-supervised financial institutions (BSFIs) through simple chat messages. A report from Smart Parenting tells the story of one consumer named Kitty who got frustrated waiting on a refund from her bank that never came un ..read more