Together with Jonathan Guryan of Northwestern University, Professor Melissa Kearney will be co-chairing a major new J-PAL North America initiative.  The State and Local Innovation Initiative will partner state and local governments in the United States with leading academic researchers from U.S. universities to identify evidence-informed solutions to challenging social problems.   Selected governments will receive funding to carry out randomized evaluations of promising policy innovations, together with continuing access to the researchers with whom they are partnered and on-the-ground technical support to help with the design and implementation of the evaluations.

Interested US state and local leaders are invited to join a webinar on December 9, 2015 from 3:30-4:30pm EST to learn more and get answers to their questions. Letters of interest should be submitted by February 16, 2016. Winners will be announced by June 6, 2016.

More information about the project may be found here.