AEA RCT Registry currently lists 2464 studies with locations in 134 countries.
This experimental study investigates the causal effect of a teacher capacity building program that promotes blended instruction, on student learning. It will be implemented in government schools in Haryana, India, in collaboration with a large, local NGO ("Avanti Fellows"). The program's objective is to positively affect the instruction of mathematics and science, in grades nine and ten. The study hypothesizes that student learning improves if teachers are given resources and training, to enrich their instruction with video-based learning materials. Secondly, the study hypothesizes that the intervention's cost-effectiveness outperforms that of an alternative model of teacher capacity building, which does not rely on infrastructure upgrades and uses printed workbooks only.
The Liberian Micro Small and Medium Enterprises sector experienced a significant decline in performance during the Ebola outbreak. Business closures or downsizing were very frequent over this period. Similarly, BRAC Liberia Microfinance registered a significant increase in missed repayment rates, particularly among borrowers of its Small Enterprise Program (SEP). By July 2016, 12% of SEP clients had missed at least one repayment, up from 7% in January 2014. Understanding the impact of interventions targeting MSMEs performance is thus important from a policy perspective. Improving management skills, and in particular customer care skills - that is, the ability to communicate effectively with customers, to be polite, helpful and welcoming, thus adopting a "customer first" mentality - see...
This project works with the government of the city of Manaus, Brazil to improve compliance with the municipal property tax. Specifically, we aim to understand the role that inequity -- similar households being treated differently by tax policy -- plays in determining compliance with the tax. We do this by combining a novel survey experiment raising the salience of horizontal inequity with rich administrative data on tax liabilities and tax compliance.
We investigate the effects of three different types of goal setting on effort provision and performance by conducting a field experiment in a college physical training course. Over the course of four weeks, students train to improve their performance of a physical task. We test for performance difference in this physical sport task across these treatments.
Group identity has emerged as a key explanatory variable of social exclusion or economic inequality because people prefer to benefit others who are similar to them (in-group favoritism) over those belonging to a different social group. If group identification were fixed, individuals belonging to disadvantaged groups would be unable to escape them. However, constructivist research has shown that identities are constructed and can change as the product of human decision making. In this paper I study the extent to which the choice over their group identity can help individuals break free from inefficient dynamics. Particularly, I look at group identity choices in a social network setting where interactions with others (both in-group and out-groups) are strategically interdependent. I provi...
This study examines the effect of different wealth levels on insurance demand for probabilistic insurance contracts. Previous research has shown that even the existence of very small default probabilities lead to a sharp decrease in individuals’ willingness to pay. In addition to wealth effects, we also investigate the impact of cognitive effort and financial literacy on the demand for probabilistic insurance.
We conducted a large RCT at the pan-African level to shed light on the impact of peer effects on innovation and entrepreneurship. The experiment involved around 5000 entrepreneurs (some established, others just aspiring) from 45 African countries. All those entrepreneurs completed an online business course; the treated individuals had the additional possibility of interacting with peers, within groups of sixty and according to one of three different setups: (a) face-to-face, (b) virtually “within” (where interaction was conducted through an Internet platform in groups of the same country), (c) virtually “across” (where the virtually connected groups displayed a balanced heterogeneity across countries). After two and a half months, all participants were asked to submit business proposa...
The semi-arid region of Northeastern Brazil is characterized by high levels of water and food insecurity as well as gender inequality. Frequent and extended droughts threaten the livelihoods of rural households. To address this, local NGO ASA with financial backing from the Federal Brazilian government has targeted the area with several social programs, most recently the expansion of the Agricultural Cisterns program known as P1+2. The P1+2 program seeks to increase the resilience of poor households to climate shocks by providing them with water storage capacity (a large cistern), a plan to adapt their production strategies (technical assistance), and cash to implement that plan. Moreover, the program seeks to promote female empowerment by reducing the intra-household imbalance of incom...
In most countries, girls underperform in math and they are less likely to choose a STEM career. Exposure to stereotypes has negative consequences on girls’ self-confidence in math, their performance measured by standardized test scores, and their likelihood to choose advanced STEM tracks (Carlana, 2019). According to the stereotype-threat theory, one potential way to reduce the negative effects of exposure to gender stereotypes is by increasing girls’ self-confidence in math. I will exploit an already ongoing project, "Girls code it better" (GCIB), a coding course targeting female middle-school students, to study the relationship between gender stereotypes and education. GCIB has been running since 2015 in Italy and I will focus on 14 school that have taken part to this project in t...
This study will investigate the potential effects of a micro entrepreneurship policy providing asset transfers, business training and psychological training to low-income individuals in Chile on labor, income and business activity. Using a randomized controlled trial, we will evaluate the impact of asset transfers, training in addition to asset transfers and we will test whether psychological training, aiming at influencing peoples "soft skills", is more effective than traditional business training.