AEA RCT Registry currently lists 9493 studies with locations in 169 countries.
The goal of our study is to causally estimate of the effects of noncompetes themselves on the employment outcomes of workers. To do this, we propose to run a large field experiment where we work alongside an employer to randomly assign noncompetes and their salience, as well as wage offers, to examine how the assignment of noncompetes affects individual willingness to accept a job offer. We can also examine subsequent employment outcomes for the workers, and even directly test the worker’s willingness to violate the noncompete by working with a second employer seeking to hire the workers.
The Ultra Poor Graduation approach is designed to graduate households out of extreme poverty to a more stable state. The BOMA Project has adapted the graduation approach for the arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) of Africa with their Rural Entrepreneur Access Project (REAP). In 2019 BOMA created “Green” REAP as a way for communities to minimize the negative environmental impact of business activities, spur positive engagement with the environment, adapt to the climate crisis and mitigate the impact of climate change on the community. Green REAP aims to simultaneously move households out of extreme poverty and create positive environmental impacts. Its three main pillars are greening livelihoods (using green enterprises to graduate the ultra-poor out of poverty), greening systems (advocati...
Our study aims to address a critical challenge in contemporary society: the integration of low-income families into the rapidly growing digital society. We implement and evaluate a program designed to achieve this goal through three primary channels. Firstly, it ensures families' access to internet connectivity. Secondly, it provides them with digital devices, thus reducing economic barriers to technology adoption. Finally, it fosters the development of digital skills among family members, enabling them to effectively utilize available digital resources. The program is implemented in an Italian city and involves approximately 900 participants, assigned to two treatment groups and a control group. We anticipate that implementing this intervention will promote increased online participat...
We use an audit correspondence field experiment, a type of randomized control trial, to quantify discrimination and other barriers in access to US primary and secondary education by school type (private, charter, and public) on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, and socio-economic status.
We conduct an information provision experiment to study young adults' policy views on worker cooperatives (i.e., firms owned and ultimately managed by their workforce) and intentions to search for a job in such distinct economic organizations. Using a representative sample of individuals aged 18-30 years, we first elicit respondents' priors about the economic performance of cooperatives along well-defined organizational dimensions (productivity, firm survival, employment security and pay inequality). We then create exogenous variation in beliefs by exposing respondents in the treatment group to expert-validated evidence on the behaviour of worker cooperatives vis-a-vis conventional firms along the same dimensions. We analyze whether treated individuals change their beliefs towards coope...
Understanding how people understand complex causal models is paramount to facilitate the implementation of the kind of policies needed to address some of the most pressing issues that society faces. This pre-registration refers to a survey – one in a series of more surveys – collecting data on people’s understanding of complex policies and corresponding narratives. This survey focuses on carbon pricing. Besides piloting our approach to complex mental models, this survey also provides a snapshot of public support for and perceptions of carbon pricing in October to early November 2024. The survey oversamples residents of Washington state, which are asked to vote on an initiative (Initiative 2117) aimed at repealing the current carbon pricing scheme, known as “cap and invest.” Hence, this ...
A large share of the workforce works in self-employed in developing countries, a hard to tax segment, compared to salaried employees. We study the perception of fairness of the tax system, focusing on the horizontal inequity between salaried and self-employed individuals, in five large low and middle-income countries. We conjecture that the prevalence of self-employment, strengthens horizontal equity concerns, which in turn lowers demand for tax interventions, and especially direct income taxation. To test this hypothesis, we conduct online surveys eliciting individual perception on horizontal equity, tax fairness, relation to vertical equity and how these preferences relate to the tax instruments used by their governments. To test whether increased awareness of horizontal inequity affe...
If the future of democracy and the policies it produces depend on younger generations, whether and how they encounter news and politics is of paramount importance. While political apathy and skepticism of traditional authorities are prevalent among young adults, social media influencers (SMIs) can and do capture their attention. Whether these seemingly-frivolous yet engaging and trusted actors have enduring effects on the policy and political values, substantive and affective attitudes, and behaviors is an important open question. We propose an online field experiment to investigate the impact of encouraging young people to expose themselves to five months of progressive narrative change messages from SMIs on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube as part of the Better Internet Initiative's fell...
In the past years, nudges have gained popularity to alter household energy choices. However, in existing literature, low-income households are generally underrepresented. Yet, in the context of rising energy prices and inequality, it becomes more and more important to understand the barriers to energy efficiency of vulnerable groups. This study addresses such literature gap, by testing the effectiveness of nudges in increasing energy efficiency investments of low-income households. We partner with a nation-wide energy efficiency assistance program in Germany that has assisted more than 400,000 low-income households since 2009. Together we implement a natural field experiment, and test the effects of information letter framings and the provision of reminders on subsequent energy efficie...
The goal of this study is to evaluate the effect of encouraging use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools for learning and education in online learning platforms using an RCT that assigns participants in an online course into two conditions; the treatment encourages them to use AI tools (such as chatGPT) for posting in discussion prompts while the control does not.