AEA RCT Registry currently lists 12160 studies with locations in 170 countries.
This study evaluates how voluntary AI-assisted practice tools affect student outcomes in higher education. We run a field experiment in a mandatory economics course at a large research university. All enrolled students (target sample of approx. 550) are offered access to a course-specific online learning platform with AI-assisted self-study tools. Impact evaluation relies on variation in AI feature availability across parts of the course and individual-level randomization into alternative default AI tool configurations. Primary outcomes are exam performance as well as engagement with AI-tools and traditional course materials.
This project studies how the opportunity to reveal emotion affects trust behavior, including trust decisions, beliefs, and ambiguity attitudes. I implement a modified trust game in which trustors may reveal positive or negative emotions, with varying degrees of flexibility over valence and intensity to the trustees, before the trustees decide how much to return. The study identifies the mechanisms through which access to emotion revelation shapes trusting behavior within a rigorous economic framework. It also examines patterns of emotion revelation and the motivations behind them.
Using administrative data from secondary schools in Greece, we document that students who stand out relative to their classmates in terms of disruptive behavior—measured by unexcused absences, which represent the number of hours that see a student removed from the class by the teacher—experience worse behavioral, academic, and higher education outcomes. However, once we account for students’ relative academic performance within the classroom, academic outcomes and subsequent exam results are more strongly associated with academic rank rather than behavioral rank. This pattern raises the question of which mechanisms translate relative standing into long-run outcomes. To shed light on these mechanisms, we conduct a survey experiment with teachers. Participants are asked to evaluate ano...
This study investigates whether living in US deindustrialized communities could lead to a disconnect in attitudes towards government and likelihood of applying to government. We hypothesize that individuals living in deindustrialized communities have negative attitudes towards government due to perceived first-hand experience interactions with government services. However, since government jobs are the last "off-shoreable" job in the labor market, we hypothesize, despite negative attitudes toward government, these individuals are more likely to apply to government jobs. We set out to test the following RQs: 1. RQ1: Do people located in deindustrialized areas report a large gap between negative attitudes toward government and interest in government employment, all else equal? 2. R...
In many developing countries, elections are often accompanied by political violence. A recurring pattern is the escalation of protest beyond its initial target—from resistance against the government to attacks on civilians, media organizations, and private property. We term this grievance-exceeding protest, distinguishing it from grievance-directed protest targeting government actors. Using the case of Bangladesh’s 2024 uprising, we hypothesize that the perceived success of such escalation may have embedded grievance-exceeding protest into citizens’ democratic norms. We argue that misperceptions about political opponents sustain this norm: citizens overestimate opponents’ tolerance for grievance-exceeding protest, generating a security-dilemma dynamic in which both sides retain violent...
Low-income households in urban Mozambique frequently face unexpected emergencies such as illness, theft, fires, floods, or job loss. These shocks often lead to sharp income losses and force households to adopt harmful coping strategies, including selling productive assets or reducing food consumption. Formal financial tools, such as insurance, are poorly suited to these risks, particularly in informal urban settings. This study evaluates whether emergency loans managed through community savings groups can help households better cope with such shocks. We conduct a cluster-randomized controlled trial with savings groups in the second largest urban area of Mozambique. Savings groups randomly assigned to the treatment arm receive a one-time external loan to establish an emergency loan fu...
This project assesses the extent to which bots and LLMs are used in the online market for survey responses, and how survey payments and performance-based bonuses affect adverse selection (low-quality or automated respondents entering the survey sample) and moral hazard (human workers using LLMs instead of providing authentic responses). We further test whether technical prevention tools and moral persuasion & penalties reduce LLM-generated responses.
Teachers often play an important role in advising students about post-secondary educational choices. In settings where students apply to a limited number of programs defined by university–major pairs, guidance from teachers can influence both the selectivity of universities students target and their choice of major. However, relatively little is known about how teachers form recommendations when advising students who differ in gender, academic profiles, and family backgrounds. The objective of this study is to examine the determinants of teachers’ guidance decisions. We conduct a survey experiment with high school teachers in which respondents evaluate hypothetical student profiles and provide recommendations about suitable university program targets. The profiles randomly vary along...
This study investigates whether a sustainable practice and accreditation scheme can reduce energy use in science laboratories. To test this, we conduct a field experiment in which lab groups are randomly assigned to either receive the sustainability program or serve as a control group. The sustainability program consists of information on sustainability practices tailored to research laboratories, calculators to help labs estimate their energy use, and a certification scheme that recognizes labs for completing sustainable actions. The experiment is implemented among lab groups at a large European research university, where laboratory activities are energy-intensive and the university has ambitious decarbonization goals.
This study investigates the effectiveness of social media posts from small businesses.