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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

  • Savings and the Poor: A Better Mattress
    The Economist - March 2010

    In this article on the growing attention being given to the importance of access to savings services, IPA Research Affiliate Sendhil Mullainathan discusses some of the difficulties of saving. 

    "Sendhil Mullainathan, a Harvard economist, points out that there is often a big gap between what people say they’d like to save and what they end up saving. Saving, he argues, is often “what didn’t happen”—the accumulation of decisions not to consume. Consumption, by contrast, is an active decision to buy something."

  • Do people value what they receive for free?
    Alliance magazine - March 2010

    IPA Project Associates Kerry Brennan and Daniel Tello review the findings of two IPA studies that examine the role of sunk costs in decisions about how to provide goods and services to the poor.

    Many people assume that paying for something will make you more likely to use it, while items given away for free are undervalued and less likely to be used. These seemingly harmless assumptions have a big impact on current debates over how health products should be delivered to the poor.

    (Full text for subscribers only)

  • Evidence to Action Symposium at UC Berkeley
    March 2010

    On April 15th, 2010, the Evidence to Action half day symposium at UC Berkeley will bring together prominent researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to learn about high impact and cost effective development programs, such as primary school deworming.  Learn more and sign up here.  The event is co-sponsored by IPA, the Center of Evaluation for Global Action, Deworm the World, and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab.

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Blog

March 1, 2010
First insights from Mongolian microfinance impact study

The blog over at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) recently featured a post by Senior Economist Ralph De Haas, who describes a randomized evaluation of microfinance in Mongolia that recently completed fieldwork.  Although analysis is ongoing, with full results expected in July o

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February 17, 2010
Commentary
Rocking the resident non-citizen vote in Bolivia

Where do resident non-citizens get to vote?

The Bolivian government recently decided that all foreigners who have lived in the country for at least two years can vote in the upcoming elections (actually, they have to vote, otherwise they can't do any bank transactions or leave the country for a month or so after the election). Is this something that other countries do?

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January 27, 2010
An Anti-Nudge on the Way to Mexico

IPA President Dean Karlan guest posts on the Nudge blog to share a story about how an "anti-nudge" in his rental car almost side-tracked a trip to visit the Microcredit Impact Study in Northern Mexico...

 

 

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