On March 31, IPA Country Director Nasreena Sampaco-Baddiri and Deputy Country Director Peter Srouji presented the role of randomized controlled trials in innovating and scaling development programs to the World Health Organization (WHO)'s Western Pacific Region as part of the former's Innovators Webinar Series.IPA presented case studies including the NORM masking study in Bangladesh, the growth charts study in Zambia, and an early childhood nutrition evaluation conducted with the Philippine National Nutrition Council, the National Economic Development Authority, and the UNDP.

Financial service providers and government regulators have a unique opportunity to monitor consumer protection risks like multiple borrowing and late repayment: these institutions have access to rich data on consumers’ financial records.But how can we go from collecting data to actually protecting consumers? In this webinar, Daniel Putman (IPA) introduced a practical toolkit for using this data for digital credit market monitoring.Drawing on examples from a collaboration with the Competition Authority of Kenya, the toolkit covers the nuts and bolts of leveraging this data—from requesting data to analysis and interpretation of outcomes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to steep drops in employment, income, and access to markets, pushing tens of millions of people in low- and middle-income countries into poverty.Social protection programming has emerged as a critical response to the social and economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.Many of these programs are social assistance measures, which provide benefits to individuals even if they have not previously paid contributions to the program.Before the pandemic, cash-based social assistance has been shown to successfully reduce poverty and enhance well-being along a number of dimensions, across many different countries.