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Our Mission

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is a nonprofit organization that creates and evaluates solutions to social and development problems, and works to scale up successful ideas through implementation and dissemination to policymakers, practitioners, investors, and donors.

News and Announcements

  • Microfinance Impact and Innovation Conference
    October 2010

    Join leading researchers and microfinance industry leaders October 21-23 in New York City.

    Registration Now Open: Register Here

    IPA researchers presenting at the conference include:

    • Abhijit Banerjee (MIT)
    • Esther Duflo (MIT)
    • Greg Fischer (LSE)
    • Xavier Gine (World Bank)
    • Dean Karlan (Yale)
    • David McKenzie (World Bank)
    • Sendhil Mullainathan (Harvard)
    • Jonathan Robinson (UCSC)
    • Dean Yang (University of Michigan)

    For more information, visit the conference website Click here.

  • Who cares about Pakistan?
    BBC News - August 2010

    IPA founder and President Dean Karlan lends insight to a discussion on why donations have been sluggish to Pakistan flood appeals

    "Sudden events seem to generate more funds. A flood (and droughts) happen gradually and build. There isn't any one single day in which news is huge. For the same reason, this pushes the story away from the media spotlight. But massive and sudden earthquakes or tsunamis draw our immediate attention and shock us." for full article click here

  • Make a Commitment
    Forbes.com - August 2010

    A  recent Forbes article talks about commitment contracts offered by StickK.com, co-founded by IPA president and Founder Dean Karlan.

    From the article "The idea, which sprang from the fertile mind of Yale economist Dean Karlan, was for a commitment store where people could set a goal and then choose the appropriate reward for success or punishment for failure."  Read more here

     

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Blog

August 20, 2010
Commentary
The future of development economics is random

Chris Blattman notes that this Summer’s edition of the Journal of Economic Perspectives is focused on development economics. What he doesn’t note is that the articles are heavily focused upon the role of randomized controlled trials within development economics, taking perspectives that are both positive and constructively critical.

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August 5, 2010
Commentary
The impact of evaluation

Alanna Sheikh started a bit of a debate last week on the limitations of impact evaluations. She cites Andrew Natsios (a former USAID administrator)

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August 4, 2010
Finally...the results from the Red Lobster study are in!

At IPA we often sell organizations on the idea of doing randomized testing by pointing out that corporations do it all the time, and they wouldn't pay for the evaluations if it weren't useful to them.  In the Washington Post today Steven Pearlstein has an interesting piece with examples of randomized trials from the business world.  Capital One and Google I knew about but Pearlstein digs deeper, pulling up results from Kraft, Family Dollar stores, and even Red Lobster restaurants:

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