AEA RCT Registry currently lists 12695 studies with locations in 171 countries.
To exit poverty, income streams of the poor must align with their liquidity needs (e.g., large investments, consumption-smoothing, saving for shocks, and smaller expenses). Traditional cash transfer programs lack flexibility, offering only fixed payment structures. This project will measure the demand for, and the welfare impacts of, the choice of a fully flexible payment schedule (frequency, timing, and amounts) in partnership with the Government of Ghana's Livelihood Against Poverty (LEAP) Program. First, we will randomize 800 (of 1,500) households into a control group (C) and 700 to a treatment group will receive cash transfers (T). Next, we will elicit beneficiary preferences over preferred times and amounts of cash transfers and measure respondents' willingness to accept (WTA)...
The first three years of life are crucial for early childhood development (ECD), with research in Western contexts highlighting the effectiveness of video feedback (VF) interventions in ECD programming. An illustrative example is the Filming Interactions to Nurture Development (FIND) program, which has consistently improved child development and caregiver outcomes. Nevertheless, FIND has not undergone evaluation in a non-Western and low-income setting, where its potential to impact caregiver and child outcomes could be significant. Therefore, we will conduct a 10-week randomized controlled trial in rural villages across Hubei Province. Villages are randomized 1:1 to the FIND intervention or control. Trained coaches deliver 10 home-based sessions, filming caregiver-child interactions and...
This study evaluates whether access to a natural-language large language model assistant improves consumer decision-making and scam avoidance in simulated online second-hand marketplaces. Adult participants recruited through Prolific will complete nine marketplace choice tasks. In each task, participants will evaluate five listings for a standardized used consumer electronic product and must select the listing they perceive to be the best available purchase. Participants will be randomly assigned at the individual level to one of two conditions: an AI-assistance treatment condition or a no-assistance control condition. Participants in the treatment condition will be permitted to consult an LLM-based assistant of their choosing while evaluating the listings. Participants in the contro...
International migration of unmarried individuals can be hindered by the inability to imagine and visualize the characteristics of one's own future spouse in the destination country. The objective of this survey experiment is to understand whether unmarried individuals are differentially able to visualize the spouse's characteristics into two distinct scenario: (i) a no migration scenario, and (ii) a migration scenario, whose order is randomized. Furthermore, we elicit migration intentions to the US and ask respondents how much important marriage considerations are when deciding to migrate from Mexico to the United States. We ask this in absolute terms and relatively to other standard factors of migration, such as wage differentials and career prospects
State revenue collection is challenging in developing-country settings, which in turn reduces the ability of the state to provide public goods. Electricity is a key sector facing substantial revenue challenges. Frequent bill non-payment leads utilities to provide low-quality power supply, including imposing regular blackouts (Burgess et al 2020). In this project, we are working with two state utilities in Madhya Pradesh, India to measure the effectiveness of and design an optimal targeting strategy for enforcement. We randomize 30,000 households into a control group and a variety of enforcement treatments, informed by the public finance literature on tax payments (e.g. De Neve et al 2021), ranging from SMS reminders to disconnections. We plan to compute direct effects of these treatment...
This paper examines how skill-based hiring practices influence the composition of the applicant pool, focusing on candidates’ educational backgrounds, skill profiles, race, and gender. Evidence shows that degree requirements often exclude qualified candidates and reinforce inequality, prompting many employers to adopt skill-based practices such as removing degree requirements to signal that skills, rather than credentials, will drive hiring decisions. Yet little is known about how such requirements affect job seekers’ application behavior. To address this gap, I partnered with a firm hiring for entry-level positions in software engineering and marketing and randomized the educational qualifications stated in job postings across three conditions: (1) a bachelor’s degree explicitly requir...
This study investigates the impact of university education on students’ green attitudes towards prospective jobs, addressing a critical gap in the literature on the determinants of sustainability-related behaviors. A behavioral survey experiment is conducted using a representative sample of 2,000 individuals aged 18-30 years, residing across all Italian regions. Participants without a university education background are also included in the sample in order to capture potential differences in green attitudes. The survey experiment employs stated preference methods to estimate respondents’ Willingness-To-Pay (WTP) for green attributes in hypothetical jobs and examine its heterogeneity across individuals’ characteristics and behavioral traits (social and time preferences, risk tolerance, ...
In partnership with a U.S. municipal government and its local electric utility, we conduct a randomized controlled trial embedded in the City's heat pump incentive program to evaluate how subsidy levels affect adoption of air-source heat pumps (ASHPs) among general-population and low- and moderate-income (LMI) households. Randomization occurs at the address level and claimable within a time-limited window. General-population and LMI addresses are each randomized between two subsidy arms, with LMI eligibility determined through the City's existing income-verification procedures. Primary outcomes are take-up of the assigned subsidy with installation of a qualifying ASHP, and time-to-installation from first portal entry. Secondary outcomes include post-installation electricity consumption ...
We investigate how leaders' gender affects group members' willingness to contribute their ideas and their performance in a series of real-effort tasks using a randomised online experiment. Participants will be assigned to groups of three with one leader and two group members, with each group member responsible for completing a series of tasks and reporting their willingness to answer for the group in each real-effort task. First, we will examine whether participants' willingness to answer for the group is affected by their leader's gender. Second, we will examine whether the quality of their answers is affected by their leader's gender. Third, we are interested in the quality gaps across treatments at different levels of willingness. Finally, we will examine whether participants' conf...
This evaluate a randomized controlled trial focused on whether complementing UCTs with facilitated participation in women's Self-Help Groups (SHGs) generates additional gains in household financial stability and quality of life, and whether the combined intervention is cost-effective. We study 651 female caregivers from households enrolled in Kenya's Inua Jamii-OVC program in Nairobi, randomized at the household level to a control arm (UCT only) or a treatment arm offering facilitated SHG entry, a KES 2,000 contribution subsidy, and a four-day training in life skills and personal finance. Baseline data were collected in March 2025 and endline in June–July 2025. Outcomes span household, caregiver, and child domains. We examine heterogeneity by residential proximity to other treated house...