AEA RCT Registry currently lists 11722 studies with locations in 170 countries.
This study evaluates the cost-effectiveness of a three-week (15-day) summer camp program in the Dominican Republic to reduce grade repetition and improve academic performance for students struggling with foundational literacy and numeracy. The program, developed and implemented by the Dominican Ministry of Education (MINERD), targets low-achieving and overage students in grades 3-5 who are at high risk of being held back. We will examine the impact of invitations to the program on attendance at the camp, test scores, grade retention, and dropout using randomized invitations to the program. We have already examined the impacts on attendance. Randomized invitations are associated with 3.9 more days of summer camp attendance and a 26 percentage point increase in the fraction of students w...
In addition to its obvious direct effects on human welfare, conflict can cause a host of indirect effects— by fueling depression, PTSD, drug abuse, and domestic violence, and by disrupting communities’ social cohesion. This project investigates how to improve mental health, resilience, and social cohesion in conflict-affected communities in rural Myanmar. One promising yet understudied approach is non- specialist, community-based mental health care delivery. We are conducting a randomized evaluation of one such community-based psychosocial program in war-torn villages in Kayin, Myanmar. The flagship Mental Health & Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) program of our implementation partner, Community Partners International, involves a simplified group-based curriculum focused on depression, post...
A wide range of experimental social science literature explores how attribution of public service delivery matters for politics (e.g. Martin and Raffler, 2021; Raffler, 2022; Grossman and Slough, 2022). A second, mostly observational, literature explains how groups engaged in armed conflict with the state ("rebels") govern areas during and after conflict (e.g. Loyle et al., 2021). We use a randomized control trial (RCT) of a mental health and psycho-social skills program provided by ethnic health organisations (EHOs) in areas outside of full Myanmar government control and ask: What is the impact of public service provision on preferences about governance in conflict-affected areas? Under what conditions does external support for civilian activities by non-state organisations shape legit...
In this experiment, we design and deploy an informational intervention to applicants to high schools, providing applicant families a set of geographically nearby, high-performing programs.
We investigate the attention and influence that scientific evidence receives in online settings. In an online experiment, participants in the role of "senders" view sets of articles based on research studies, and decide which articles to share and what content to provide alongside the article. We vary features of the articles and the communication process to shed light on the drivers of online attention to different types of evidence. In a separate experiment, participants in the role of "receivers" will choose which articles to click on to read more about.
The role of quality certification in driving firm growth in low-income countries remains insufficiently understood. Certification may enable firms to integrate into more demanding and higher-value supply chains, both domestically and globally, by meeting stricter quality, safety, and regulatory standards. These shifts have the potential to foster standardization and upgrading of both products and production processes, with resulting productivity gains that propagate through supplier and buyer networks. We investigate these mechanisms in partnership with the Rwanda Standards Board (RSB) through a randomized controlled trial of “Zamukana Ubuziranenge,” a technical assistance program that supports small and medium-sized enterprises in obtaining product and system certifications. We use adm...
This study examines how regulatory interventions affect cooperation in repeated social dilemmas, with a particular focus on spillover effects that persist after external enforcement is removed. We employ a laboratory experiment in which 252 participants play a two-person finitely repeated Prisoner's Dilemma (T=90, R=60, P=55, S=10) over 24 rounds divided into two phases.In Phase 1 (Rounds 1–12), participants are randomly and fixedly matched and subject to one of five between-subjects treatments that vary the scope and information structure of a forced-compliance regulation mechanism. Unlike standard punishment mechanisms, the regulation imposes no financial penalties; instead, defection choices are automatically corrected to cooperation, allowing us to isolate the behavioral effects of ...
Stories can shape children’s mental models, aspirations, and long-term educational and economic outcomes. Yet the stories children are exposed to often reinforce stereotypes and are hard to change as they are deeply entrenched in rigid school curricula. We conduct novel experimentation in a school setting, integrating empowering messages and non-stereotypical gender representation into a literacy curriculum used in government primary schools in Botswana.
Seminal work by James Andreoni and others suggests that large contributions to charitable organizations partially crowd out individual donations. We extend this literature by assessing whether non-monetary actions - specifically prayers - similarly crowd out donations to charitable causes. To do so, we designed a survey experiment in which religious Christian respondents were given the opportunity to donate either to an individual or to a community in need following a natural disaster. A baseline condition simply solicits a donation. Treatment conditions inform subjects that either one or one hundred other people had previously offered a prayer for the individual’s or community’s full recovery. We hypothesize that others' prayers reduce people's perceived marginal benefit of donating an...
Existing literature suggests people give in part because it makes them feel good, or receive "warm glow". But there is also evidence that people give due to social pressure and use donations as a public signal of their pro-social type. As such expressing one's level of care for a charitable cause reduces the signaling power of additional action and so reduces donations. We test this theory using an online survey experiment in which subjects were given the opportunity to donate to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). We hypothesize that giving people the opportunity to express their level of care for animals in need reduces their monetary donations to the ASPCA.