AEA RCT Registry currently lists 3644 studies with locations in 150 countries.
The question of whether wearing face masks in public is an effective measure in slowing the spread of COVID-19 is subject of current public discussion. To add to this debate, we conduct a field experiment investigating whether face masks affect how individuals comply with public health recommendations such as keeping a physical distance of 150 cm. Using two treatments (with and without mask), experimenters wait in lines to enter businesses to measure the distance kept by the person next in line. We test whether wearing a face mask impacts the distance kept by others.
Executive functions such as working memory, self-regulation, inhibitory control, are mental processes that enable the voluntary control of actions, thoughts and emotions. Executive functions play a key role in academic learning, as early as preschool. There exist stark inequalities in the distribution of executive functions at school entry, especially between children from different socio-economic background. This experiment aims at training executive functions in pre-schoolers by providing them with several sessions of pretend-play activities in small groups. Pretend-play activities are extracted from the Tools of the Mind curriculum. The experiment aims at measuring the short run impact of pretend-play activities on brain functioning, executive functions, child' s self-regulation, s...
This paper investigates experimentally the relationship between inequality in initial wealth and deception. Our basic design is adopted from Gneezy (2005): two players interact in a deception game. It is common knowledge that player 1 has private information about the payoffs for both players of two alternative actions. Player 1 sends a message to player 2, indicating which alternative putatively will end up in a higher payoff for player 2. The message, which can either be true or false, does not affect the payoffs of the players. Player 2 has no information about the payoffs. However, player 2 selects one of the two alternatives A or B, which is payoff-relevant for both players. We extend Gneezy (2005) by two elements. First, we systematically vary the initial wealth of the players 1 a...
This project studies whether and how the advice students receive in high school impacts their post-secondary education decisions. We test whether male and female students are advised toward gender-congruent fields of study and whether this contributes to the underrepresentation of women in certain fields. This is done through surveys with high school students and guidance counsellors/teachers.
We look at data acquired during the 2020 applications cycle to Master's programs in Psychology in Israel. The data is obtained from the matching system that governs the market (the Israeli Psychology Master's Match, or IPMM). Starting from 2020, rank-order lists (ROL) were collected both before and after the interviewing period, and we can look at the evolution of preference between these two periods. We show a correlation between being ranked highly by a program and increasing its rank compared to the previously inputted rank. We also link these results with the applicants' responses to a post-match survey regarding their motivation to change their preferences because of the interviews.
This field experiment analyzes whether a Matching Defined Contribution (MDC) scheme is an effective incentive to increase enrollment and contributions in retirement saving plans. Our intervention involves transferring funds into workers’ pension funds, conditional on their own contributions. The research proposes three pension plans: 100%, 50%, and 0% MDC (subject to a maximum amount) for six months. These plans are offered to informal workers from micro firms located in the city of Lima, Peru, who were not previously enrolled in the pension system.
This pre-analysis plan outlines four groups of pre-specified hypotheses for analyzing data collected via an umbrella project referred to as ‘Her Time.’ The primary research questions relate to methodologically validating high-frequency phone surveys vis-a-vis single instance in-person surveys relying on 24-hour or 7-day recall periods that are standard in the literature. We use the cases of time use, dietary diversity and eating practices, sanitation and hygiene, and financial transactions. In addition, we test the implications for women’s time burden of a simple information treatment designed to update men’s beliefs about their peers’ acceptance of male participation in household chores. Finally, we compare women’s responses to sensitive gender norms and empowerment questions elicited ...
In response to the covid19 crisis, El Salvador has imposed one of the strictest lockdown policies. The severe restrictions imposed create specific challenges and costs for poorer populations. As many rely on informal work to survive, they may no longer earn an income and are at risk of falling further into poverty. At the same time, these populations may have many health problems that increase their probability of developing severe symptoms if they contract covid19. Hence the extent to which individuals support alternative policy measures may depend on their health risk perceptions, which themselves may be based on imperfect knowledge. In this study, we follow up a cohort of clients from a micro-finance organization and test whether, upon receiving information about risk factors associa...
We use online experiments to study the link between sequential experiences and (i) altruism, (ii) trust, and (iii) cooperation.
In this project, we investigate whether people’s support of a behavioral policy depends on the psychological mechanism by which it affects behavior. We implement an online-survey experiment among a representative sample of adults aged 18 to 69 years in Germany. Each subject is randomly assigned to one of ten experimental groups, and completes three consecutive stages. In stage 1 all subjects are asked whether they support training for the unemployed. In stage 2 all subjects are presented with a vignette of an unemployed individual, who is informed by letter that the Federal Employment Agency registered him for a training course and that he has two weeks to object to his registration, and is otherwise obliged to participate. Depending on the treatment, subjects learn in the vignette that...