AEA RCT Registry currently lists 3621 studies with locations in 150 countries.
New forms of market mechanisms in which participants share products are becoming increasingly popular. In this project, we address the question whether not-for-profit initiatives in sharing economies, where at most informal rules are at play, can sustain in the long-run and to what extent free-riding occurs. The experimental intervention, which we preregister, is part of a larger study in which we collect field data. For the experimental part, a sample of local markets is randomized into a treatment and control group. After baseline field data have been collected, members of the treatment group receive a positive supply shock and we test whether this shock has a transitory or more permanent effect.
This paper studies the impact of decision-making procedures on individuals’ rationality and welfare. We theoretically and experimentally study a specific decision-making procedure, sequential elimination in which a decision-maker has to sequentially eliminate options that are not preferred in the decision problem, one by one, until only one option remains. First, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition that sequential elimination results in consistent choice while direct decision-making may not. Then we experiment to examine the treatment effect of sequential elimination on the choice consistency by comparing choice data in three treatment groups: sequential examination, sequential elimination and procedure selection. We also have an incentive-compatible design in which particip...
This experimental design is implemented in collaboration with the NGO Chile Transparencia. Beginning in February 2020 the Chilean Comptroller General Office rolled out 167 audits in municipalities throughout the country. The treatment consists of the audit report for each municipality in addition to a short information video that highlights the extent to which the municipality has high or low malfeasance counts. We have recruited approximately 49,000 online subjects from these municipalities (plus a control group of 177 non-audited municipalities). All 10,000 subjects will receive a pre-treatment survey measuring their pre-treatment beliefs regarding corruption in their municipality. Within each audited municipality subjects randomly assigned to the treatment will receive a v...
The aim of the study is to examine how cognitive uncertainty is moderated by cognitive ability in preference elicitation research. Moreover, it is examined whether subjects under higher cognitive uncertainty are more likely to accept to have their choice be replaced with a bid that maximizes subjects' expected payoff and whether replacing their choice varies with increasing cost levels.
In this project, we investigate the extent to which people manipulate their views on morality in a self-serving way. We implement an online experiment among a representative sample of adults aged between 18 and 69 years in Germany. Each subject is randomly assigned to one of four experimental groups, and completes four consecutive stages. In stage 1 of treatment 1, the subject divides a fixed monetary endowment between herself and a charity which supports children with low educational success. In stage 2, the subject is asked whether she considers it a moral obligation to support children with low educational success. In stage 3, we elicit the subject’s belief about other respondents’ moral assessment and incentivize correct beliefs. In stage 4, we again elicit moral assessment as in st...
A key argument for policy competition between sub-national entities is that direct comparison of policy outcomes yields efficient public service provision. However, the necessary condition to reap these efficiency gains – that voters can observe policy outcomes – is often not fulfilled. A case in point is the education system of Germany, where the legislative and executive power over public education is vested in the federal states, but regular cross-state comparative student assessment data is largely lacking. To study the underlying political-economy reasons for lacking comparability across states, we conduct parallel surveys among German state parliamentarians and German citizens. We elicit citizens’ preferences for comparability in a representative online survey with 10,000 respond...
We let people predict the outcome of an online survey experiment and investigate the causal effects of (i) monetary incentives, (ii) anchoring, and (iii) participants’ experience in the experiment on the accuracy of predictions. Therefore, we implement an online-survey experiment among a representative sample of adults aged 18 to 69 years in Germany, and additionally survey a sample of experts (economics professors). Respondents in the representative sample are randomized into six different experimental groups. The first three groups participate in an “information experiment” on preferences for increased school spending. Groups 4, 5, and 6 participate in a “prediction experiment” and predict the results from the “information experiment”. Group 4 receives no incentives for a correct pre...
The growing COVID-19 crisis has created an unprecedented health, as well as economic crisis. Many governments in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have advocated the public health strategies adopted elsewhere, and introduced various levels of “lockdown” to reduce the number of new infections. While these measures can reduce transmissions and “flatten the curve” of new cases to protect fragile health systems, they can come at a great economic cost. Voices have emerged against these strategies in many settings, claiming that the economic price to pay is too high, and that these measures hurt more than they help. Using a survey experiment where respondents are randomized to receiving different messages, we test the impact of different messages on people’s perceptions of the health a...
Disclosure rates for sexual orientation data are often lower than for other demographic data such as ethnicity. It is important to increase willing disclosure of sexual orientation data to ensure that employers can identify potential biases in their recruitment processes and implement appropriate adjustments to make them fairer. We are testing the impact of messaging on increasing willing disclosure rates of sexual orientation data during recruitment. In a 4-armed randomised controlled trial, applicants starting a job application see either the current form or three alternative simple messages that aim to address different key potential reasons for non-disclosure. These are 1) mistrust in the secure handling of their demographic data, 2) the belief that disclosure would harm the applica...
Nourishing a growing world population in ecologically sustainable ways is one of the main goals of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Current efforts prioritize increasing agricultural production, whereas reducing food waste and losses, including post-harvest losses, receives much less attention in policy-making. This bias is problematic, as hermetic storage bags, for instance, provide a simple and affordable means of preserving the quantity and quality of harvested food. Hermetic storage limits atmospheric oxygen, which causes desiccation of insects and other pests that damage stored grains. Hermetic storage bags could thus, in principle, curb post-harvest losses and allow farmers to store their produce longer. This, in turn, could improve food security, f...