AEA RCT Registry currently lists 11945 studies with locations in 170 countries.
This research project aims to understand to what extent information about a financial product, when provided either to men or women, affects spouses’ beliefs and attitudes towards the financial product, product purchase decisions, and intra-household information sharing, cooperation and conflict outcomes. We conduct a randomized controlled trial among 3100 pastoral households in Kenya and Ethiopia. We randomize, at the household-level, the gender of the spouse that receives information about an index insurance and savings financial product through video interventions. Additionally, we cross-randomize whether or not the household member that is targeted with information can directly share the information with their spouse, by requesting the intervention team to also show the video to the...
In recent years, Ethiopia has experienced a significant increase in conflicts, leading to the death and displacement of millions of people, destruction of essential infrastructure worth billions of dollars, and exacerbation of human rights violations. This can be attributed to ethnic prejudice, stemming largely from historical tensions between different ethnic groups. Misinformation about ethnic groups on social media; the current ethnic-based federal structure; and the manipulation of historical grievances by those seeking political gain have exacerbated existing prejudicial attitudes and behaviors. This study examines the host family program (HFP) at the University of Gondar leveraging an experimental design to evaluate the impact of intergroup contact facilitated by the program on pr...
We collaborate with Trip.com to pilot a "Flexible Personal Leave" policy within the firm: Employees may optionally apply for additional unpaid personal leave without providing specific justification, subject to completed work handover (unpaid leave, benefits unchanged, pilot cap: 45 days/year per person). Trip wants to introduce this as they believes it will attract employees and improve retention as many employees will find this extremely valuable. We aim to assess the take-up and effects of this policy, in particular, how take-up varies across demographics, employee seniority and position, etc., and how the policy affects worker productivity and promotion, firm recruitment and retention, etc.
This is a follow-up to our initial preregistration with identifier AEARCTR-0015630. We propose an experiment on cheap talk. A receiver guesses a secret number, and receives advice from a sender with misaligned incentives. In our initial experiment we had three treatment conditions that varied whether the sender can provide informed advice and how cognitively demanding the receiver finds it to respond to the advice in a sophisticated way. We observed that receivers reacted heterogeneously to informed advice. In this follow-up, we investigate mechanisms behind the observed heterogeneous effects.
While experimental evidence supports the effectiveness of parenting interventions, the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based parenting interventions on caregivers and children remains understudied. In this study, we aim to evaluate whether AI-assisted parenting guidance can improve caregivers’ parenting mental health, stress, and self-efficacy, as well as early childhood developmental outcomes in rural China. In a pre-existing center-based parenting program in rural China, we randomly assign 20 centers (over 1000 registered caregiver-child dyads) to treatment and control arms. In the treatment centers, caregivers are encouraged to use an AI application integrated with a comprehensive curriculum covering six domains on early childhood development: psychological development, nutrit...
Female labor force participation in Pakistan is among the lowest in the world. Many working women are engaged in home-based, informal employment in the garment sector, where they earn low wages and lack protections against exploitation by contractors. We study the role of intra-household misaligned beliefs in shaping women’s labor supply decisions, focusing on whether incorrect perceptions about husbands’ support for outside employment act as a barrier to formal work. In April 2025 (our baseline), we surveyed 301 home-based working women in Lahore along with their spouses, to elicit wives’ and husbands’ preferences for home-based versus outside-home work, as well as their beliefs of their spouse’s preferences. The survey provided evidence of misalignment in intra-household preferences a...
India's Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS) is deploying AI-assisted automated metering infrastructure across 42 electricity distribution utilities (DISCOMs) to target 250 million smart meter installations. The tasks automated by these systems, including physical meter reading, manual billing, and field-based fault detection, define the routine occupational core of an estimated three to four million contractual workers in the Indian electricity distribution sector. Unlike permanent DISCOM employees protected by the Industrial Disputes Act 1947, contractual workers have no statutory redundancy protection and are the primary channel through which AI-induced displacement will materialise. This study evaluates whether a structured job-matching intervention can mitigate the employment...
How social ties are formed, maintained, and mobilized has changed with the adoption of digital communication technologies like WhatsApp. This paper estimates the value individuals place on the communication infrastructure that sustains their social networks and examines the short-run causal effects of losing access to it on social capital and well-being. We conduct a field experiment in three remote island communities in Indonesia, recruiting approximately 1,200 household heads as participants. To elicit individuals’ willingness to accept compensation for a one-week restriction on WhatsApp usage, we implement the double-bounded dichotomous choice (DBDC) method. Participants are then randomly assigned to a treatment group, in which WhatsApp access is blocked for one week, or to a contro...
Agricultural burning is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, yet it remains widespread in many low- and middle-income countries due to limited access to viable alternatives. This study examines whether a market-based intervention that relaxes key constraints can reduce agricultural burning among smallholder farmers. Using a randomized controlled trial with 1,024 farmers in Thailand, the study tests whether improving access to alternative markets for crop residues affects farmers’ decisions to burn or sell their residues.
This study examines how individuals adjust their financial behaviour when faced with a sudden liquidity shock combined with changes in tax enforcement. In a laboratory experiment, participants repeatedly allocate income between a formal, taxed deposit account and an informal, untaxed cash holding. In each round, participants must finance a mandatory expenditure by allocating payments between deposits and cash. Expenditure from cash is subject to a friction cost, capturing the relative difficulty of using cash compared to digital payment methods. The experimental design compares behaviour across three treatments: a baseline with no shock, an unanticipated shock, and a pre-announced shock. In both unanticipated shock and preannounced shock treatments, a policy intervention invalidates ac...