On October 27th, IPA and J-PAL hosted a session at the Opportunity Finance Network Conference — "Randomized Control Trials: What your CDFI Needs to Know." In the session, the US Finance Initiative at IPA discussed why RCTs are so powerful and how community development financial institutions can use RCTs to understand the impacts of their products and services.

On October 21, Henriette Hanicotte presented IPA's work at the Forum on Investing in Young Children Globally (iYCG) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.The workshop was held in partnership with the Jacobs Foundation, the Institute for Human Development, at the Aga Khan University, and the Bernard van Leer Foundation. The workshop was the ninth and final workshop of the Forum.Speakers explored research on the costs of quality investments in young children; policies and financing that capitalize on existing investments and other contextual advantages; and practices and research that are culturally grounded and developmentally.

The SME Program held its Seventh Working Group meeting at the Yale School of Management on October 21, 2016 in New Haven, Connecticut.The meeting convened SME Program affiliates to discuss innovative research in the SME space.  Presenters included: Opening Remarks Dean Karlan, Yale University Lucia Sánchez, Innovations for Poverty Action       Can Government Intervention Make Firms More Investment-Ready? A Randomized Experiment in the Western Balkans David McKenzie, World Bank The Effects of Business Accelerators on Venture Performance: Evidence from Start-Up Chile Juanita Gonzalez-Uribe, London School of Economics     The drivers of post-entry growth: TFPQ vs.