AEA RCT Registry currently lists 12333 studies with locations in 171 countries.
Can corporations do evil without being run by evil people? If so, why? This study explores these questions through a survey experiment. Participants face a moral trade-off involving a financially beneficial yet ethically costly decision. The experimental design randomly varies contextual and structural features of the decision to examine how each factor influences the decision-making process. In addition, we aim to analyze individual heterogeneity using measures from moral psychology to understand why participants differ in their responses. The goal is to shed light on how context and incentives shape moral judgment.
We have written a detailed pre-analysis plan that we will release on study completion. We have omitted the abstract here so that it becomes visible when the study is complete.
Nutritional needs vary for each person, shaped by their genetic profile, metabolic processes, and microbiome composition. Recent technological advances have stimulated innovative solutions for personalized dietary guidance, with Food Recommendation Systems (FRS) leveraging AI to provide tailored recommendations based on users' preferences and health goals. Yet, the current FRS is limited in integrating health profiles, preferences, and nutrition needs. To address this, the project aims to develop and evaluate the impact of applying an AI and natural language processing (NLP)-driven FRS that personalizes dietary suggestions based on individual health parameters, nutritional goals, and preferences. The impact of this project relies on improving dietary adherence, enhancing user satisfacti...
A first study in schools in rural Madagascar evaluated the effect of a bundle of hygiene-focused interventions in schools and showed substantial improvements in girls’ learning outcomes (+0.2SD). Building on these results, this study will run a second RCT to disentangle the effects of physical infrastructure from all the other components of the intervention (sensitization and sanitary pads). This separation is crucial for cost-effectiveness analysis (since physical infrastructure is expected to account for about 60% of the per-head intervention cost), and for understanding the mechanisms through which expanding access to infrastructure can complement female empowerment interventions. The study will measure effects on learning, psychosocial wellbeing, and a variety of secondary outcomes.
Economic decisions and productivity suffer when cognitive resources are limited. Recent papers have shown, for example, that productivity is reduced when poverty consumes mental resources (Kaur et al. 2023). We test whether political constraints impact economic outcomes through similar channels. In particular, we experimentally examine whether a minority’s uncertainty about their status within a nation generates psychological effects comparable to those generated by financial concerns. We test this with a labour market experiment in West Benga and online throughout India. Workers complete data-processing tasks and we randomize incidental exposure to two types of exclusionary policies—policies that pose a direct, material threat and policies that pose a more symbolic threat. We test whet...
Research on financial literacy shows that women and older people have significantly lower levels of financial literacy. This has implications for investment and savings decisions, especially in light of an increasingly complex financial system and the growing need for individual retirement planning. Confidence can be a driving force in answering financial literacy questions and in financial decision making. For example, older individuals continue to show high levels of confidence in financial decision making, despite declining financial literacy scores at older ages (Finke et al. 2017). In addition, women have less confidence in their own abilities with regard to financial matters (Lusardi and Mitchell 2014). We would like to make the following contributions to the literature: We want t...
The present project is the first to identify the individual level effects of jobs on female political participation using a field experiment. We identify the effects of jobs on political participation by collaborating with 25 large companies in Ethiopia to randomly assign jobs to equally qualified applicants.
There are sizable gaps on indicators of human capital between the caste groups in India. Evidence suggests that such gaps, in part at least, are affected by discriminatory attitudes of school teachers towards students from the group called the Scheduled Castes. Our study intends to provide evidence on the prevalence of discriminatory attitudes a large sample of school teachers from India. We then design a treatment to mitigate discrimination that operate through empathy towards the schedule castes.
Economists have discussed different perspectives on ”procedural fairness”. Examples of ”fair” procedures include unbiased random processes (Machina’s mom) and symmetric games [Sugden and Wang, 2020]. We want to add the idea that a procedure (random process or game) will be considered more ”fair”, and the outcomes it generates more ”acceptable”, if the participants have unanimously agreed to it. That is, even a biased lottery or an asymmetric game may be regarded as ”fair” if it was agreed to even by the disadvantaged party.
This project evaluates the potential for technology to alleviate constraints on local tax capacity. Working in collaboration with a local government and a local private firm in Ghana, the project randomizes the availability of technology for tax collectors in the field. Collectors face several constraints to achieve their objectives of delivering bills and collecting tax payments which technology may partly remove. In addition, we study whether the presence of technology impacts property owners' belief about capacity of the state and engagement with local officials.