AEA RCT Registry currently lists 12869 studies with locations in 172 countries.
Almost 1 billion adults worldwide are unable read or write in any language, with an estimated cost of US$ 5 billion annually to low-income countries (UNESCO 2020). This is of particular concern in West Africa, which has some of the lowest education indicators in the world. In Niger, the subject of our study, adult illiteracy rates are estimated at 70% (USAID 2023). Illiteracy is particularly striking in rural areas and among women. Niger’s ranking in terms of educational attainment is comparable to other Sahelian countries, namely Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali (UNDP 2017). While policymakers and academics alike have focused on primary and secondary education programs, such programs will only have impacts in the medium to long-term. Adult education programs have the potential to brid...
Many of the world's poor live in rural areas in low-income countries that have limited access to paved roads and transportation. Previous evidence suggests that providing bicycles to school girls reduced the gender gap in access to education in India and Zambia but limited research has been conducted on the effect of providing transportation access to adults in these same settings. To address this evidence gap, we are conducting a randomized controlled trial of World Bicycle Relief's Mobilized Communities program in Mumbwa District, Zambia. 120 livelihoods groups and 273 community service workers were randomly assigned to receive a bicycle in June 2023 or to a control group. We collected baseline data immediately prior to bicycle distribution, and will return for endline data collection...
We study whether religion can promote conservation of natural resources. We run a field experiment in rural Burundi with forest users—forest owners and workers such as charcoal producers. Participants are randomly assigned to hear a religious stewardship message, a secular civic-duty message from Burundi’s environmental law, or a neutral message. They then play a public-goods game and decide how much to contribute to forest conservation. Contributions are real: 80% of the conservation account is donated to the office for the protection of forests in Burundi. We compare contributions across groups to test whether religious framing increases cooperation. We also examine heterogeneity by religiosity, affiliation, forest income, and pro-environmental perceptions. The study may inform outrea...
This research project evaluates the causal effect of an information treatment on students’ intentions to participate in international mobility programs. The study focuses on undergraduate students enrolled in the Economics bachelor’s degree (TrEC) at the University of Padua. As part of a broader survey aimed at understanding students’ preferences, expectations, and perceived barriers to mobility, participants will be randomly assigned at the individual level to one of three groups: - Control group receiving general information about mobility opportunities. - Treatment group receiving additional information on the academic benefits of studying abroad. - Treatment group receiving information on both academic and labor market returns. The treatment consists of standardized written inf...
This study evaluates whether access to a Grounded Large Language Model (LLM) Study Platform, an AI-powered study tool available to ASU students, helps undergraduate students build more effective study habits and improve academic performance, and whether the tool is more effective when paired with personalized guidance about evidence-based study practices. The study is a three-arm randomized controlled trial among undergraduate students enrolled in targeted intermediate economics and business courses at Arizona State University. Consenting students complete a baseline survey after the first course exam and are randomly assigned to: (1) a Control group receiving the standard course experience and neutral study-related contact; (2) a Grounded Large Language Model (LLM) Study Platform-only ...
The study uses an between-subjects randomized online survey experiment. After completing a pre-test questionnaire on demographics and moral convictions, participants are randomly assigned to a treatment or control group and read a short informational text about hate crime. The treatment group reads an additional paragraph on anti-hate-crime legislation. Participants then complete an Implicit Association Test (IAT) and a questionnaire measuring attitudes related to hate crime. The main analysis examines whether exposure to information on anti-hate-crime legislation affects these attitudes and whether treatment effects are moderated by ex-ante measured moral convictions.
Generative AI can now be used to help citizens move from a mere social concern to a concrete, structured policy proposal. This creates a question for participatory politics: what changes when part of the work of generating a proposal can be supported by AI? AI may matter on the formulation side, by shaping the clarity, structure, feasibility, and appeal of the proposals citizens formulate. It may also matter on the reception side, by shaping how other citizens react to those proposals, especially when they know that AI was involved in producing them. We study these questions in the context of Le Primarie delle Idee, an Italian participatory platform launched in April 2026. The platform allows registered users to develop policy proposals either with the support of a generative AI a...
This thesis examines whether an extraordinary municipal debt communication increases tax compliance and whether adding information about the use of public resources produces an additional effect. We implement a randomized controlled field experiment involving more than 16.000 municipal accounts. Accounts are assigned with equal probability, within 48 strata, to four arms: no debt statement; a standard debt statement without an additional municipal message; a statement containing a public-safety message; or a statement containing a public-space message. Stratification is based on valid-email availability, property locality, and four categories of overdue installments. Accounts in the three active treatment arms with a valid email address receive the same statement through both physical ...
Like other weather-related disasters, the occurrence of severe wildfires is growing throughout North America. This escalating risk can be mitigated through efforts by property owners to manage vegetation and other flammable material near homes. Despite the cost-effectiveness of these investments, take-up is low. There are several economic and psychological theories for why beneficial self-protective investments in wildfire readiness could have low take-up despite their likely cost-effectiveness: these could include lack of information, complexity and psychological frictions, credit/cash constraints, and spatial externalities across neighboring properties. We propose to conduct a pilot study to identify interventions to address these barriers. We will randomize households in areas with h...
Like other weather-related disasters, the occurrence of severe wildfires is growing throughout North America. This escalating risk can be mitigated through efforts by property owners to manage vegetation and other flammable material near homes. Despite the cost-effectiveness of these investments, take-up is low. There are several economic and psychological theories for why beneficial self-protective investments in wildfire readiness could have low take-up despite their likely cost-effectiveness: these could include lack of information, complexity and psychological frictions, credit/cash constraints, and spatial externalities across neighboring properties. We propose to conduct a study to identify interventions to address these barriers. We will randomize households in areas with high w...