Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is an American non-profit research and policy organization founded in 2002 by economist Dean Karlan.

IPA conducts randomized controlled trials (RCTs), along with other types of quantitative research, to measure the impacts of development programs in sectors including microfinance, education, health, peace and recovery, governance, agriculture, social protection, and small and medium enterprises.

[8] In 2017, IPA and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab received a $16 million grant from the UK Department for International Development to research policies that promote peace and support communities in areas recovering from conflict.

[7] IPA's evaluations assess interventions in the areas of small and medium enterprises, financial inclusion, peace and recovery, governance, health, education, agriculture, and social protection.

IPA does this through collaborating with decision-makers while creating policy-relevant evidence, proactive sharing of results, and providing technical assistance to applying solutions at scale.

[19] IPA's research spans eight programs: agriculture, education, financial inclusion, governance, health, peace and recovery, small and medium enterprises, and social protection.

[23] IPA studies conducted in a variety of countries show that switching existing clients to individual liability does not increase default rates, however.

Further, IPA studies demonstrate that microcredit does not have a transformative impact on poverty, but that it can give low-income households more freedom in optimizing the ways they make money, consume, and invest.

This research has included projects that examine the impact of crop prices,[25][26] rainfall insurance, fertilizer use,[27] and access to export markets.