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Our Mission

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is a nonprofit organization that creates and evaluates approaches to solving development problems, and disseminates information about what works and what does not to policymakers, practitioners, investors and donors around the world.

News and Announcements

  • How public policy can prevent heart disease
    Newsweek - February 2010

    Research on the efficacy of commitment contracts to quit smoking by IPA Research Affiliates Xavier Giné, Dean Karlan, and Jonathan Zinman is mentioned in a Newsweek article about how public policy tools can be used to fight heart disease.

  • Sendhil Mullainathan at TEDIndia
    TEDIndia - February 2010

    IPA Research Affiliate Sendhil Mullainathan spoke at TED India in November 2009 on the topic "Solving social problems with a nudge".  The video from his presentation is now available online here.

  • Reaching the Poorest
    The Economist - January 2010

    An article on re-thinking the strategies that will improve education in the developing world mentions work by Karthik Muralidharan, an IPA Research Affiliate. 

    "When schools are poorly run, studying what is wrong is the most vital subject of all."

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Blog

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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January 24, 2010
Commentary
What could you live without?

Kristof (again!) has a nice blog post about the tradeoff between consuming things we think we want, at the expense of not giving to charities to help people who struggle for basic needs.  Very much like Peter Singer's famous lake analog

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January 11, 2010
Are microfinance clients who sell contraband less likely to repay?

I was surprised to learn the other day that in Bolivia a huge fraction of the goods purchased with microcredit are smuggled across the Peruvian and Chilean borders in order to avoid customs (for instance, most appliances are smuggled here). Ignoring the morality of it (I don't think the government cares all that much - many retailers who sell contraband pay sales tax), do you think that the behavior of clients who sell contraband is somehow different? Are people who can and do buy illegal products less likely to care about fulfilling their loan commitments?

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