AEA RCT Registry currently lists 12160 studies with locations in 170 countries.
This study examines policymakers' and the general public's demand for evidence-based policies. Leveraging the results of a large-scale field experiment, we implement a set of survey experiments on a sample of U.S. state policymakers and a representative sample of Americans to investigate whether support for robust policy evaluation and scaling is influenced by prior beliefs on efficacy of the policy, and how respondents update their beliefs and preferences when presented with novel experimental evidence.
Research shows that poverty can hinder cognitive development, particularly in low-income countries where children often underutilize their cognitive potential both inside and outside the classroom. The ability to think critically, make informed decisions, plan strategically, remember information, and reason spatially is fundamental to learning and human capital formation—yet these skills are often underdeveloped in contexts of extreme poverty. Chess offers a promising, engaging, and low-cost means to foster these abilities. As a structured game of strategy and foresight, chess strengthens higher-order cognitive processes through play-based learning. This project will causally evaluate the impact of structured chess instruction on children’s cognitive, academic, and non-cognitive develop...
This study evaluates the impact of an AI-powered math tutoring platform and an AI career coaching chatbot on learning outcomes and educational aspirations among 5th-year secondary students in public schools in Lima, Peru. The AI math tutor covers Peru's national math curriculum and is used during regular math class time in school computer labs, supervised by students' regular math teacher. The AI career coach helps students explore post-secondary options, understand economic returns to education, and develop concrete career plans during existing tutoría (guidance) periods. The study uses a cluster-randomized design with approximately 100 schools as the unit of randomization and three study arms: (1) AI tutoring with learning-science modifications plus career coaching, (2) AI tutoring...
I am running an RCT in 80 government and 40 low-cost private schools in Cape Coast Ghana for first grade students. These schools get one or both of two cross-randomized treatments. One treatment organizes scripted parent meetings where parents are 1) told the benefits of doing literacy activities with their child at home (e.g. asking what they learned in school, reading with them, going through school materials etc.), 2) trained on how to understand the report card they get on students literacy scores, and 3) briefly trained how to run a 1-minute reading assessment using provided materials on their child. The other cross-randomized treatment trains school leaders to better coach their teachers in teaching literacy, and also how to interact/engage parents. I am studying the interaction o...
Research shows that U.S. employers still exhibit racial biases against Black job seekers, and Black employees in predominantly white workplaces often experience higher turnover rates and fewer promotions than their counterparts. However, limited research has examined whether and how the racial identity of business leaders may disrupt discriminatory practices and behavior. Evidence suggests that diverse leadership among high-ranking individuals in a company can lead to increased managerial and staff diversity. Our proposed study examines how Black leadership in the talent management process impacts the screening of diverse job candidates. To investigate this, in a field experiment, we will post an authentic job opening and recruit freelance hiring professionals to assist us in the init...
This study evaluates how voluntary AI-assisted practice tools affect student outcomes in higher education. We run a field experiment in a mandatory economics course at a large research university. All enrolled students (target sample of approx. 550) are offered access to a course-specific online learning platform with AI-assisted self-study tools. Impact evaluation relies on variation in AI feature availability across parts of the course and individual-level randomization into alternative default AI tool configurations. Primary outcomes are exam performance as well as engagement with AI-tools and traditional course materials.
This project studies how the opportunity to reveal emotion affects trust behavior, including trust decisions, beliefs, and ambiguity attitudes. I implement a modified trust game in which trustors may reveal positive or negative emotions, with varying degrees of flexibility over valence and intensity to the trustees, before the trustees decide how much to return. The study identifies the mechanisms through which access to emotion revelation shapes trusting behavior within a rigorous economic framework. It also examines patterns of emotion revelation and the motivations behind them.
Using administrative data from secondary schools in Greece, we document that students who stand out relative to their classmates in terms of disruptive behavior—measured by unexcused absences, which represent the number of hours that see a student removed from the class by the teacher—experience worse behavioral, academic, and higher education outcomes. However, once we account for students’ relative academic performance within the classroom, academic outcomes and subsequent exam results are more strongly associated with academic rank rather than behavioral rank. This pattern raises the question of which mechanisms translate relative standing into long-run outcomes. To shed light on these mechanisms, we conduct a survey experiment with teachers. Participants are asked to evaluate ano...
This study investigates whether living in US deindustrialized communities could lead to a disconnect in attitudes towards government and likelihood of applying to government. We hypothesize that individuals living in deindustrialized communities have negative attitudes towards government due to perceived first-hand experience interactions with government services. However, since government jobs are the last "off-shoreable" job in the labor market, we hypothesize, despite negative attitudes toward government, these individuals are more likely to apply to government jobs. We set out to test the following RQs: 1. RQ1: Do people located in deindustrialized areas report a large gap between negative attitudes toward government and interest in government employment, all else equal? 2. R...
In many developing countries, elections are often accompanied by political violence. A recurring pattern is the escalation of protest beyond its initial target—from resistance against the government to attacks on civilians, media organizations, and private property. We term this grievance-exceeding protest, distinguishing it from grievance-directed protest targeting government actors. Using the case of Bangladesh’s 2024 uprising, we hypothesize that the perceived success of such escalation may have embedded grievance-exceeding protest into citizens’ democratic norms. We argue that misperceptions about political opponents sustain this norm: citizens overestimate opponents’ tolerance for grievance-exceeding protest, generating a security-dilemma dynamic in which both sides retain violent...