This paper evaluates a large-scale maternal cash transfer program targeted to pregnant women and mothers of children under two. The program provides monthly cash transfers, and is supplemented with Social Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) in a random subset of villages. Both interventions...

What characterizes a conspiracy theorist? Combining data on beliefs about the origin of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Liberia with conventional and machine learning methods, we uncover that, contrary to popular beliefs, socio-demographic and economic indicators play a minor role in predicting who...

Amid extreme uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic, economic policymakers have struggled to respond to rapidly changing circumstances with appropriate speed and scale. One policy obstacle is the dearth of real-time indicators of the pandemic’s economic impacts, especially in low and middle...

We experimentally evaluate the impact on child malnutrition of a maternal cash transfer program in Myanmar that was supplemented with Social Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) in a subset of villages. The combination of interventions significantly reduced the proportion of children stunted,...