AEA RCT Registry currently lists 11902 studies with locations in 170 countries.
This study investigates the effect of providing information and making costs associated with car use more salient. Specifically, we will study the impact of informing drivers about road toll prices over time on driving behavior and attitudes.
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)...
As extreme weather events become more frequent and severe, agricultural households face increasing challenges in adapting. There is an urgent need for policy tools that can assist households in coping with these events. Anticipatory humanitarian action is a novel approach where humanitarian organizations use meteorological forecasts to proactively distribute humanitarian assistance to households before disasters occur. This anticipatory distribution of assistance aims to prevent or reduce humanitarian impacts before they fully unfold. This study conducts a randomized impact evaluation of anticipatory cash transfers distributed to pastoralist households in Mongolia, where extreme winter conditions cause high livestock mortality and threaten rural livelihoods. We evaluate the effectivenes...
This study aims to understand the influence of social norms on survey responses, focusing on parenting behaviors as reported by a sample of ~2,500 parents, and the educational and job aspirations of their adolescent children in Ghana. This sample is part of a larger intervention study (LEAD, Aurino et al. 2024). We do so through two survey experiments, which we aim to investigate separately. With regards to parents, we test if random prior exposure to a survey module reminding them about social image around culturally sensitive parenting behaviors leads them to report differently on their own disciplinary practices towards their children. We assess whether there is an effect of eliciting social pressure norms on parents reports of their parenting practices, in a way that aligns with t...
We study how different types of information about relative priority shape preference reporting under the student-proposing Deferred Acceptance (DA) mechanism, focusing on whether information affects participants’ beliefs about their admission chances and, in turn, their reporting behavior. To address this question, we implement a laboratory school choice experiment in which four students compete for four schools, each with a capacity of one seat. Students have strict preferences over schools: they earn 15 EUR for their top choice, 11 EUR for their second choice, 8 EUR for their third choice, and 4 EUR for their least preferred choice. Schools rank students based on randomly assigned admission scores that determine priority. In each round, participants first submit an initial rank-order...
Abstract We study whether quality premiums at milk collection centers can transmit incentives upstream and upgrade compositional milk quality in Ugandan dairy value chains. Building on prior work that installed approximately 150 milk analyzers and raised testing without consistent quality-based price differentiation, we partner with MCCs and small processors to randomize trader eligibility for a per-liter quality premium tied to butterfat and solids-non-fat. Randomization occurs at the trader level with blocking by MCC or processor. The primary trader outcome is an Anderson index of compositional quality measured by analyzers during deliveries in the final study week. The primary farmer outcome is the volume-weighted farmgate price from the last three sales, used to assess pass-through....
Quality of products transacted within value chains, and the preservation of quality throughout the chain, is central to value chain development. In Uganda, we find that there is a clear demand from dairy processors for better quality raw milk and substantial scope for quality improvement at the dairy farmer level, yet a market for quality does not develop, holding back further value chain transformation. In this study, we test two potential reasons why a market for quality does not develop through a field experiment with randomized interventions at different levels of the value chain. At the dairy farmer level, we conjecture that farmers are paying attention to the wrong quality attributes and design a video-based information campaign to point out what the quality parameters are that ma...
This study examines how people think about income inequality and whether these views differ across individuals with different mindsets about its causes. It measures respondents’ perceptions of the income distribution, related economic beliefs, and views about fairness and inequality. Using a randomized survey experiment, the study tests whether different kinds of information and policy-related prompts affect these beliefs and whether responses vary systematically between more individualist and more structuralist respondents. The project aims to better understand how mindsets shape perceptions of inequality and belief updating.
We conduct a 2x2 factorial field experiment with a leading Chinese apparel brand and 155 of its suppliers to study how governance structure shapes supplier compliance with multi-dimensional reporting mandates. We independently vary decision authority (mandate versus delegation of KPI selection) and monitoring scope (comprehensive versus targeted carbon audit). Contrary to classical organizational theory, simpler governance structures generate substantially higher engagement among capacity-constrained small and medium-sized enterprises. Mandating a fixed KPI set reduces the missing-data rate by 10.4 percentage points relative to the control mean, while delegating KPI choice yields a negligible effect. Targeted carbon audits raise documentation coverage by 0.857 additional categories, rou...
High employee turnover remains a persistent barrier to productivity in manufacturing firms. This study investigates the roles of pre-employment information, financial growth incentives, and job assignment mechanisms in mitigating turnover and improving worker-job matches. We conducted a large-scale field experiment with approximately 2,000 newly hired workers in a Chinese electronics factory using a 3 × 3 cross-randomized design. In the hiring stage, we test the effects of information frictions and perceived career growth on selection. Applicants are randomized into: (1) a pure control group; (2) an information treatment viewing a video on factory life and strict workplace regulations; or (3) a "growth path" treatment combining the video with information on on factory life, position-spe...