AEA RCT Registry currently lists 12199 studies with locations in 170 countries.
We conducted a randomized experiment in which we provided Wikipedia access to secondary school students at boarding schools in Malawi. Malawi is one of the least developed countries in the world, yet internet is widely available on mobile phones. While many young Malawians have occasional or regular access to a mobile phone, access to a smart phone and the internet remain unaffordable. This is likely to change in the near future, in Malawi and across the developed world. The effects of a large increase in access to information for young African students is an important policy question. Investigating the impact of Wikipedia in particular is interesting for both theoretical and policy reasons. First, restricting internet access to Wikipedia allows us to isolate the impact of an informatio...
This project examines individual preferences regarding the optimal design of public administration.
Legal or administrative barriers—such as employment bans for asylum seekers—can prevent people from working even when they initially would like to. This study examines whether such temporary barriers reduce people’s willingness to work both during periods of restricted access and after the barriers are removed and explores possible mechanisms driving these effects. In a multi-day online experiment, participants repeatedly choose between a well-paid work option and a lower-paid leisure option. In one treatment, participants are repeatedly prevented from carrying out the work option they choose and are instead assigned to leisure, creating a situation in which access to work is externally restricted. In a control group, participants always have full access to the work option. The main g...
Workforce Australia Online, administered by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR), supports job-ready jobseekers to access online tools, information and training to help them move into employment. Mutual obligation requirements are a key component of Workforce Australia Online. They are designed to ensure that individuals who are receiving income support are actively looking for work and are participating in activities that will help them into employment. Mutual obligation requirements have an impact on how quickly jobseekers find work. However, there is little high-quality evidence in an Australian context, and no randomised control trial evidence on the impact of varying the amount of mutual obligation requirements on employment outcomes. The aim of the t...
This study evaluates the effect of information about demographic trends on youth perceptions of the labor market and preferences for mobility. To do so, we conduct a survey experiment on more than 900 high school students in Rome, Italy. Half of the sample receives information on the demographic trends in Italy (Treatment group) while the rest of them receive unrelated information on renewable energies (Control group).
This research studies how correcting disinformation disseminated primarily by the state affects political attitudes and beliefs in an autocratic state. In partnership with an independent media organization, the study randomizes revealing truthful information and pointing out state manipulations using fact-checking services and aims to observe any changes to the support of the autocratic regime and opposing political movements and demand for accountability. Given that prior research finds low demand for truthful information, the study lowers the cost of acquiring truthful information by delivering daily fact-checked messages to the recipient using a dedicated channel on a popular social media platform. The study measures the demand to continue receiving the service and its effect on atti...
Independent media is widely regarded as a cornerstone for democratization, but citizens may respond in diverging ways. This study investigates how locally sourced, uncensored media information influences beliefs, attitudes, and political engagement within an autocratic context. In collaboration with an independent media organization in Kazakhstan, I conduct a field experiment in which individuals are randomly assigned to receive non-mainstream political information via a fact-checking service. The intervention lowers the cost of accessing independent information by delivering daily fact-checked messages via a dedicated channel on a popular social media platform. Evidence from the pilot study indicates that exposure to independent information leads individuals to update their beliefs abo...
The Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO) is partnering with the Houston Food Bank to understand the characteristics, needs, and behaviors of Food Scholarship program participants. The Food Scholarship program provides university students with groceries to help reduce financial strain, alleviate food insecurity, and support academic success. This randomized controlled trial will test whether financial incentives offered to participants for the completion of an end-of-semester survey changes the composition of survey completers. Three groups will receive email and text invitations to complete the online survey. One group (control) will not be offered any financial incentive to complete the survey, while the other two groups (treatment) will be offered $10 and $20, respectiv...
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This study examines how alternative decision procedures affect choices between risky lotteries. In an online, incentivized, within-subject experiment, participants repeatedly choose between pairs of lotteries under six different procedures: direct choice (benchmark), random default, delegation to a random device, randomized advice, and two procedures combining the random default with delegation to a random device or randomized advice. We study whether and how these procedures shift choice behavior relative to direct choice and random default, and whether procedural effects correlate with choice-level and individual-level measures of decision complexity.