AEA RCT Registry currently lists 7234 studies with locations in 166 countries.
We evaluate the impact of an intervention designed to reduce family planning provider bias towards young, unmarried, and nulliparous women in Tanzania, Burkina Faso, and Pakistan. The intervention has three components: 1) a summit that highlight the consequences of provider bias and instructions on how not to be biased, 2) a forum for continued communication between providers and implementation staff that reinforces the information from the summit, and 3) a rewards program where facilities in which providers exhibit less biased client interactions or who have improved the most towards this end are rewarded with social recognition and a ceremony. We randomized half of the eligible clinics in each country to receive the intervention and the other half to be a control group. We evaluate th...
Rule following is fundamental to social order and often a practical form of human cooperation. Both rule following and cooperation have in common that they are individually costly but collectively beneficial in many interesting situations. Here we investigate how cooperation in a social dilemma situation is linked to people’s propensity to follow costly rules. This study comprises of five treatments which examine how rule following behaviour and cooperation in a public good setting are related. We will conduct an online experiment with 520 participants on the platform Prolific, using the software LIONESS Lab.
We investigate the impact of exposure to organised crime on state legitimacy and institutional trust.
We study the importance of information and network frictions facing potential rural-urban migrants in Kenya using a cluster-randomized trial with a representative set of households across 5 Kenyan counties. Pre-experimental work shows that rural workers' beliefs about income in the largest Kenyan city, Nairobi, are severely downward biased on average, and that many potential migrants have limited or no social connections in Nairobi. Given the importance of social networks in forming beliefs, assisting with job search, and providing localized information, it is possible that limited information and weak networks act as a barrier to migration. Our information intervention provides detailed information about earnings in Nairobi. Our ``group'' and ``guide'' interventions supplement this...
Theoretically, indivisible investments together with financial frictions can lower development, generate poverty traps, and lead agents to become risk-loving. Using experimental cash grants involving a choice between a safer, low payoff and a riskier, large payoff lottery, we find that 27 percent choose the riskier, larger lottery. Small grant winners invest in livestock and business inventory, while large grant winners invest in land, which exhibits high capital gains. Our quantitative model shows that the aggregate effects of financial deepening are sizable if the indivisible investment can be accumulated (e.g., capital) but not if it is in fixed supply (e.g., land).
Through a lab-in-the-field experiment, we will study the effect of two individual-level video-based interventions to improve the salience of water quality and demand for quality testing of drinking water. Outcomes will be measured through a behavioural game and a post-game survey at a lab on day one, and through takeup of household water quality testing offered at the household on day two.
A feeling of being observed can lead individuals to behave more prosocially. Based on a static comparison of decision-making in public versus in private, this finding has been shown to be very robust across various domains of ethical decision-making. Social image concerns - often claimed as the underlying reason - are regularly exploited by charities, governments and firms in practice. However, many real-life applications are characterized by repeated decision-making and there are many contexts in which it is not possible (or too costly) to always ensure observability of actions. In this project, we explore dynamics of prosocial decision-making with a focus on the role of observability by means of an online lab experiment. In particular, we investigate whether observability of initial a...
Take-up of new technologies is often very slow, especially in developing countries. While the structure of social networks, information diffusion, and pricing of technologies have been investigated as potential causes, the role of restrictive social attitudes (including stigma, social norms and taboos) limiting optimal technology adoption has so far only received scarce attention. Yet, especially in areas of health - such as mental health care, HIV testing and menstrual management - restrictive social attitudes seem to play an important role in limiting people in their adoption of beneficial new technologies. To get a better understanding about how stigma, norms and cultural taboos limit the take up and use of advanced health technologies, we look at the generally stigmatized topic of m...
The norms that underpin societal prejudice can be highly persistent, but using the law to grant rights to minority groups may generate changes in whether people think discrimination is socially acceptable. In this project, I will test whether the expansion of legal rights for a stigmatized minority - transgender persons in India - has an effect on discrimination in a real-stakes hiring choice. I will measure whether telling people about the expanding legal status of transgenders can improve their attitudes directly, and will also examine whether such an intervention can generate positive social spillovers: do people talk more positively about transgenders in a group discussion after hearing about transgender rights, and can this persuade others in their group to subsequently discriminat...
Previous literature and public opinion polling have indicated that a sizeable proportion of the American public misunderstands the graduated nature of the U.S. federal income tax. How these (mis)understandings affect perceptions and preferences of the federal income tax system are less well understood. I start by investigating the predictors of graduated tax rate understanding. Then, after randomly assigning a sample of U.S. respondents to an informational video highlighting the key workings of the federal income tax’s graduated tax rate structure, I estimate the effects of providing this information on an array of tax-related perceptions and preferences. Finally, I add an additional level of randomization which provides a common political claim about tax brackets to half of the respond...