AEA RCT Registry currently lists 12552 studies with locations in 171 countries.
Despite significant gains in financial access across low- and middle-income countries, financial health and resilience remain critically low among informal sector workers, largely due to exposure to uninsured health shocks. In Nigeria, only about 3% of adults aged 15-49 have any form of health insurance, leaving the majority vulnerable to catastrophic out-of-pocket expenditures that undermine business viability and loan repayment. This study provides causal evidence on the impact of bundling health insurance with microfinance loans on the financial outcomes of micro and small informal business owners in Edo State, Nigeria. In partnership with a microfinance institution and the Edo State Health Insurance Commission, eligible clients are offered a voluntary bundled product combining a mic...
The study was designed as a parallel-group, two-arm RCT conducted in strict accordance with the CONSORT 2025 declaration (Hopewell et al., 2025). A pre-test/post-test experimental design was used in the study. While participants in the Home-Based Circuit Training (HBCT) structured exercise program, the Control Group (CG) was asked to maintain their sedentary lifestyles and daily routines without any additional physical activity. A three-visit protocol was used for data collection in the study. In the first visit, participants were given full information about the study protocol. An exercise visit was also included for the participants. The second visit was used for pre-testing. After the completion of the twelve-week period, the third visit was used for post-test data collection (Figure...
We conduct online experiments to understand the mechanisms behind household debt repayment behaviors.
Micro-entrepreneurs compose a large share of the economy of low- and middle-income countries. Despite being the main source of income for millions of households, most micro-firms do not grow over time, do not create jobs and often have very low productivity and profitability. In this study, we aim to understand novel mechanisms underlying micro-entrepreneurs’ decision to keep operating subsistence-level firms, despite their low profitability. This project implements an experimental impact evaluation focused on understanding the role of information constraints and biased beliefs about business performance and job prospects on the occupational choices of micro-entrepreneurs.
We investigate whether and how gender norms and stereotypes constrain women’s entrepreneurship, empowerment, and business decisions in Paraguay. Our study first maps out how actors on the value chain perceive women in business roles. We do so by eliciting beliefs about gender norms and stereotypes among suppliers, business associations, regulators, financial institutions, and buyers. This exercise documents considerable heterogeneity in beliefs across these five reference groups. Second, we conduct an information treatment in which randomly selected women entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs receive information about these reference groups’ beliefs. This intervention is inspired by the norm correction literature which documents signification misperceptions of beliefs. The premise of...
We evaluate scalable, school-based programs aimed at preventing gender-based violence (GBV) in public spaces and empowering adolescent girls in Punjab, Pakistan, where widespread sexual harassment severely limits girls’ mobility and school attendance. In partnership with the University of Health Sciences (UHS) and the School Education Department of Punjab, we implement a three-arm clustered randomized controlled trial in 91 girls-only and 49 boys-only public middle schools across Lahore, Kasur, and Sheikhupra. Girls in 30 randomly selected treatment schools receive self-defense training focused on situational awareness, assertive communication, and physical and verbal response strategies. A different randomly selected set of 30 girls-only schools receive no training but in nearby (withi...
I experimentally study the impact of leading images on public opinion. (For details: see attached pre-analysis plan)
Previous research suggests that quantity-based incentives can be just as effective as quality-based incentives in driving creative outcomes. A potentially non-trivial cost to quantity-based incentives, though, is that it increases the number of items that managers need to evaluate. Artificial intelligence (A.I.) programs provide a way for managers to evaluate creative content quickly, allowing them to assess the quality of a large amount of content in a relatively short amount of time. However, the use of A.I. to evaluate the quality of creative content could discourage workers from developing and sharing their innovative ideas if they are uncertain as to how A.I. will evaluate their content, or if they are meaningfully averse towards algorithmic evaluations of their creative content. W...
Most of the debate about women’s labor market experience in low-income countries focuses on “jobs,” i.e., occupations characterized by short-term horizons often motivated by the need to alleviate temporary household budget constraints. Policy discussions and workforce programs have largely targeted women’s labor force participation and short-term employment outcomes. This project shifts the focus to “careers,” emphasizing women’s employment in occupations with a long-term perspective that include training, wage growth, and advancement opportunities. In partnership with the H&M Group’s Sustainability Unit, we study the career paths of women employed in export-oriented garment factories in Bangladesh and India, where they comprise the majority of frontline production workers but are sever...
When interacting with others, individuals are uncertain about whether they will encounter pro-social or anti-social behavior. In such interactions, even a single observation can trigger biased beliefs about entire groups. We conduct a laboratory experiment in which participants simultaneously receive statistically irrelevant information about their in-group and out-group, with treatments varying whether both signals are pro-social or anti-social. Since the informational structure is identical across groups by design, any subsequent difference in cooperative behavior toward in-group versus out-group members must reflect asymmetric biased beliefs. We hypothesize that individuals overweigh signals that confirm existing group stereotypes, generalizing negative information about out-group me...