AEA RCT Registry currently lists 12910 studies with locations in 174 countries.
When workers from underrepresented groups opt out of “higher risk, higher reward” jobs, income gaps arise. Workers may rationally avoid applying to jobs where they’d be disproportionately punished for failure, and employer bias informs how employers interpret negative productivity signals from workers of different identities. Socialized group differences in traits such as risk aversion or other-regarding preferences also influence job choice. Our proposed research aims to answer: Do workers from underrepresented groups take disproportionate action to avoid failure on the job? If so, what proportion of any resultant gaps in job choice are due to anticipated discrimination versus socialized differences in behavioral traits? We propose running an experiment in which we randomly vary the po...
Marginalized groups can avoid discrimination by hiding their group identity, and by “passing” for another identity. How successful are these strategies at masking identity, and which types of people are most successful? And does the hiding of identity change intergroup interactions? We answer these questions for the case of caste in north India. We are recruiting high and low-caste men to work together on data entry tasks for one day. Worker pairs will be randomized to either have their caste identity revealed (through common knowledge of full names), or hidden (through common knowledge only of first names), or to be told to hide their caste from their partner.
Punishment is commonly used by lawmakers to deter criminal behavior. Punishments do not just punish offenders, but they also deter other people from committing the same crimes. In monitoring and investigating crimes, the inside knowledge or tips provided by private citizens who have knowledge of the crime offer valuable information to the authority. However, it is unclear about the relationship between the severity of punishment and likelihood of reporting crimes. In this study, we examine whether the severity of sanctions will affect people’s decision to report crimes, and how this decision is affected by the relative magnitude of harm and good.
This project aims to explore how exchange rate expectations influence households' portfolio saving choices. More specifically, we plan to study how beliefs about future exchange rate value affect households' choices among saving instruments such as checking and savings accounts, cash in local or foreign currency, and cryptocurrency, among others. While existing theory provides guidance on the channels through which expected exchange rate movements shape households' behavior, there is very limited causal evidence on this relationship. To address this gap and overcome the endogeneity existing between the two elements, we propose to generate exogenous variation in households' exchange rate beliefs and analyze their intended saving behavior. We will conduct a randomized controlled trial, pr...
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The existing evidence generally finds that when artificial intelligence (AI) tools are provided to workers, the least skilled gain the most (Brynjolfsson, Li, and Raymond 2025; Noy and Zhang 2023; Peng et al. 2023; Dell’Acqua et al. 2026; Cruces et al. 2026). Of course, that only happens if the least skilled workers adopt these novel tools. However, this same subset of workers appears to adopt AI tools the least. This randomized controlled trial measures the effect of endogenous AI adoption on the productivity distribution among 1,350 students at Cecyteg (Colegio de Estudios Científicos y Tecnológicos del Estado de Guanajuato), a network of technical-vocational upper-secondary schools distributed across Guanajuato, the sixth most populous state in Mexico. Eligible human subjects are Cec...
We run a set of survey experiments to evaluate participation in public consultation meetings and preferences for development projects
We conducted a series of survey experiments to identify individual's public policy preferences regarding AI regulation and AI deployment as a security tool.
Adolescence and young adulthood are formative periods for sexual and reproductive health and emerging autonomy. During this period, young people navigate changing social roles and relationships, including expectations around gender and sexuality and ideas about what constitutes acceptable behavior. Social approval and perceived expectations may therefore shape not only how young women feel able to express their own views, but also whether they feel able to act on those views when engaging with sensitive topics such as contraception. Importantly, individuals respond to the social environment as they perceive it, which may differ from the underlying distribution of attitudes in that environment. Such discrepancies may lead individuals to make decisions partly on the basis of inaccurate pe...
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...