AEA RCT Registry currently lists 12443 studies with locations in 171 countries.
This study explores how zero-interest loans, in the form of inventory, shapes sales performance and economic empowerment of rural female entrepreneurs. The study also explores the relative efficacy of such loans versus general marketing support to make them better salespersons. Beyond asking whether inventory-on-credit helps, we unbundle two mechanisms: the ability to demonstrate a product to customers, and the ability to offer instant delivery from stock on hand. The study uses a four-armed randomized controlled trial in Bihar (India): full inventory advance (demonstration and instant delivery), sealed stock (instant delivery, no demonstration), demo unit only (demonstration, no instant delivery), and a business-as-usual control. The results are expected to inform scalable models for r...
Diet-related chronic diseases impose substantial health and economic costs worldwide, making it critical to understand the mechanisms that drive persistent unhealthy food consumption. Traditional approaches to addressing this challenge focused on hard-end (e.g., taxes, subsidies, bans) and soft-end (e.g., nudges) measures to influence consumer decisions. However, these measures fail to account for a critical root cause of unhealthy food consumption: the indulgent and rewarding experience gained from consuming unhealthy foods. It is therefore important to account for consumption experience and memory when designing nudges or interventions to steer consumers to healthy food choices. This study fills this gap by utilizing attribution bias to examine how an induced positive consumption expe...
This study evaluates the impact of Gemini Guided Learning, an AI-powered instructional experience within Gemini that provides personalised learning through guided questions, step-by-step scaffolding, and multimodal resources rather than supplying direct answers, on mathematics learning in Junior Secondary Schools (JSS1 and JSS2, ages 13–15). The trial randomly assigns classrooms either to continue with regular teaching or to use Gemini in approximately half of their mathematics lessons over an eight to nine (8-9) week period. The same teachers are responsible for both treatment and control classrooms; all will receive training on how to use the tool, though it will only be applied in treatment classes. Mathematics performance of students and teachers will be assessed at the beginning an...
Although indigenous communities inhabit nearly eighty percent of the world’s richest biodiversity hotspots, their role in promoting biodiversity conservation has received little systematic study. Many indigenous communities that coexist with predator species embrace “live-and-let-live” philosophies, avoiding confrontation even in the face of livestock or crop losses. Their belief systems often frame local flora and fauna as divine incarnations that command reverence and protection. One such population are the Rabari herders of Rajasthan in India, whose belief in the divine nature of leopards has contributed to their homelands supporting one of the highest leopard densities in the world. Using a lab-in-field experiment, herders' ambiguity aversion for both predation events and an art...
Experiment A is part of a larger project studying risky choice in GoalQuest, an employee rewards program in which workers choose one of three increasingly ambitious performance goals paired with increasingly valuable all-or-nothing rewards. The broader paper uses field data from GoalQuest to document excess conservative choice and choice heterogeneity, and develops a mechanism in which people evaluate nested risky options through pairwise comparisons while neglecting the relevant conditional probabilities. Experiment A addresses a key conceptual step in the project: whether behavior in a stylized GoalQuest menu resembles behavior in economically equivalent lottery menus, and whether conservative choice changes when the relevant pairwise conditional probabilities are made salient. The pr...
From an economic perspective, human capital investment decisions are driven by a comparison of expected lifetime benefits and costs. When information is asymmetric — as is particularly acute for students from migrant and lower socioeconomic backgrounds, but not exclusive to them — subjective expectations deviate from objective returns: families tend to overestimate the direct and indirect costs of higher education (tuition, living expenses, opportunity cost) and underestimate its long-term benefits (wage premiums, employment stability). This informational wedge can flip the Human Capital Model's investment inequality, producing suboptimal non-enrollment among individuals who would experience positive net returns from tertiary education. This study implements a five-armed randomized c...
We will run a randomized evaluation with unemployed youth (ages 18–35) on South Africa’s SAYouth.mobi platform, in partnership with Harambee, to test scalable ways of helping jobseekers identify their skills and act on better information. The study has two parts. First, we offer an AI-supported skills-elicitation and CV-builder conversation (powered by a large language model) to see whether it helps young people surface prior experience, describe their skills more clearly, and progress in job search. Second, we test how to present personalized labour-market facts so they motivate rather than discourage. Some participants receive only a concise “good-news” message that highlights which of their skill areas are in higher demand (“Pull-only”). Others receive the same recommendation plus an...
While much attention has been dedicated to the health and well-being of children under 5, the needs of older children have been historically overlooked. However, children between 5- and 14-years face health-related challenges higher than previously realized, during a period of life critical for physical, psychological, cognitive and social development. In Zambia, the context for this study, the prevalence of malaria is highest in children aged 5-17, with 40% of children testing positive in endemic areas; a study based in Lusaka, the capital also reported high levels of morbidity in primary school children, with 35% reporting febrile symptoms in the past two weeks, 66% reporting cough, 25% reporting diarrhea, and 32% having worms in their stool. Many of these problems are caused or compo...
This study examines how the salience of dividend tax information affects investor behavior. Using a randomized controlled experiment, we deliver differentiated tax policy and dividend-related information to investors at key stages of the dividend distribution process, including the dividend announcement date, the implementation date of the dividend plan, and the record date. We then evaluate how increasing the salience of tax information influences investors’ trading behavior, holding periods, and investment returns. This study aims to explore the effect of targeted policy-oriented investor education at the micro level and provide empirical evidence for enhancing the transmission of tax policies and improving investor education.
This pilot survey experiment seeks to replicate and extend Conklin (2020) by examining whether calling a complainant a “victim,” rather than a “complaining witness,” affects how people evaluate an alleged assault case. Participants will read a brief vignette in which a defendant denies that an assault occurred and claims that the complainant fabricated the accusation. The experiment randomly varies the term used to refer to the complainant (“victim” versus “complaining witness”) and the complainant’s gender in the vignette. After reading the vignette, participants will answer questions about whether they believe the defendant punched the complainant, whether they agree that the complainant is a victim, and other questions about the two parties and their claims. The study is intended to ...