AEA RCT Registry currently lists 11786 studies with locations in 170 countries.
Smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa face severe and persistent information barriers. A new wave of AI-assisted digital information technologies has the potential to overcome these barriers at scale, delivering personalized, hyperlocal agronomic advice at low cost. Yet little is known about the impacts of these technologies and how they diffuse. This pilot study investigates these questions in the context of a novel AI-assisted agricultural advisory tool called Virtual Agronomist. Farmers can use this technology to generate tailored nutrient management plans based on high-resolution soil maps, diagnose plant health and pest problems, and access weather advisories. We investigate the impacts of this tool on farmer practices and agricultural outcomes. We also use this context to stud...
We elicit fairness preferences using a spectator design, and adapt their design to measure preferences for predistribution relative to redistribution. In the experiment, participants in the role of ``spectators'' determine the incomes of participants in the role of ``workers,'' who earned these incomes from a real-effort task. We focus on two important dimensions that vary between predistribution and redistribution: the timing of the spectator's decision relative to the accrual of worker earnings---before incomes are accrued (ex-ante) vs. after (ex-post)---and the context of changing earnings relative to changing a base payment to both workers. Additionally, using open-ended and closed-ended questions, we will elicit the spectators' explanations for their implemented inequality, their p...
Collective action problems pose significant barriers to addressing environmental problems in developing countries. In this project, we explore potential solutions to these challenges within the context of a rural area in a developing country. Our experiments compare the standard education approach which disseminates information about the environmental problem with three novel interventions. The first equips participants with a tailored set of tools aimed at enhancing cooperation and social capital within the community and thereby facilitating collective action. The second treatment adds a means for the community to monitor the environmental problem in public spaces. In the final variant, we provide additional information that enables the community to better understand their own exposure...
This study examines whether a brief, integrated financial education curriculum can improve adolescents' savings behavior, reduce impulsive consumption, and potentially enhance academic self-discipline. We conduct a randomized controlled trial in Chinese middle schools, involving approximately 60 classrooms and 3,000 seventh and eighth-grade students. The intervention consists of two 45-minute lessons delivered one week apart. Lesson 1 (Compound Interest): Teaches students how savings grow over time through compound interest, using mathematical examples and goal-setting exercises. Lesson 2 (Impulse Control): Helps students differentiate between needs and wants, understand opportunity costs, and develop strategies to avoid impulsive purchases. We measure impacts on: (1) financial literacy...
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 short, school-based curriculum can improve adolescents' ability to verify information and protect themselves from digital fraud while calibrating their social trust appropriately. We conduct a randomized controlled trial in junior high schools in China, involving approximately 50 classrooms and 2,500 seventh and eighth-grade students. The intervention consists of a 45-minute anti-fraud education module delivered during regular class time. Rather than focusing on fear-based warnings, the curriculum teaches students to: Identify common fraud signals (false authority, urgency, emotional manipulation); Apply cost-benefit reasoning to information verification decisions; Distinguish between healthy skepticism and excessive distrust. We measure impacts on stu...
We design a laboratory experiment to test whether intergenerational altruism can sustain cooperation in a one-shot Prisoner’s Dilemma embedded in an overlapping generations (OLG) structure. In each generation, two players from rival “families” play a Prisoner’s Dilemma; each player’s payoff depends on both their own earnings and those of their successor in the next generation, weighted by an altruism parameter α. A sharp theoretical prediction emerges: mutual cooperation is a subgame perfect equilibrium if and only if α exceeds a threshold determined by the game’s payoffs. We implement a 3×3 factorial design crossing three communication protocols—no communication, partner communication, and parent-child plus partner communication—with three altruism levels (α ∈ {0.4, 1.0, 1.6}) spanning...
In Kenya, young people, especially young women, face challenges regarding sexual and reproductive health (SRH), leading to negative consequences on their education, well-being and future opportunities. A growing body of evidence suggests positive effects of edutainment on SRH outcomes, such as the evaluation of the popular series MTV Shuga in Nigeria, have found significant improvements in knowledge and behaviors, with HIV testing doubled and STI incidence halved. Despite strong offline results, the effectiveness of edutainment in online, interactive formats remains less explored. Diverse online interventions, such as TV dramas, documentaries, ad campaigns, chatbots, and apps, require rigorous evaluation methods like randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to establish causal links between...
We conduct a laboratory experiment at the University of Osaka to test whether brief cooperative contact with an outgroup member reduces the willingness to pay for same-ethnicity coworkers. The design combines the price-of-prejudice paradigm of Hedegaard and Tyran (2018) with a randomized contact round: Japanese subjects are paired with either a Japanese or an international student for a joint production task, and then make 30 incentivized binary choices between potential partners whose nationality and productivity are revealed.
This study employed a randomized pre-test-post-test control group design. Both groups underwent baseline assessments before the intervention and post-tests six weeks later. The Zumba Group participated in a structured Zumba training program, while the Control Group maintained their usual daily routines without additional exercise. Participants visited the laboratory on three separate occasions. During the first visit, they were informed about the training protocol and completed the exercise procedures. The second visit (one week later) included baseline testing. The third visit occurred after six weeks of intervention, and all post-training assessments were conducted during this visit. All measurements and training were performed under the same environmental conditions (temperature 22–2...