AEA RCT Registry currently lists 12869 studies with locations in 172 countries.
When actions generate externalities, market prices alone fail to reflect their full social costs or benefits, leading to inefficient outcomes. The classical remedy is a Pigouvian tax, which restores the first-best on its own. Yet such price instruments rarely operate alone: informal social norms governed by punishment are also widespread and discipline the same behaviors. If a tax suffices in theory, why do people punish those engaging in externality-inducing actions? We answer this question using an incentivized experiment uncovering the psychology of punishment. Our experiment tests whether individuals’ willingness to punish others engaging in externality-inducing actions depends on two theoretically important inputs: the extent to which externalities are internalized by policy and th...
We study whether the Complex Instruction Program (CIP) improves the achievement of disadvantaged students and lowers their risk of dropping out. CIP restructures classroom group work to break entrenched status hierarchies and raise the standing of low-status students, on the premise that dropout is as much rooted in how students are positioned in the classroom as in what they are taught. We test this in a school-level cluster-randomized trial across 84 Hungarian primary schools serving disadvantaged populations, using a staggered treatment assignment design: treatment teachers are trained and mentored over a school year and deliver CIP lessons to students in grades 5–8, while control schools adopt the program two years later. Our primary outcomes are standardized mathematics and reading...
This study examines how information about a peer's investment outcomes affects individual investment decisions among Indian business students in a portfolio allocation setting. Participants are randomly assigned to one of four conditions that vary the information they receive about a peer's prior investment performance and the context surrounding that performance. We study whether learning about a peer's high investment outcome shifts a participant's own willingness to take on financial risk, and whether this response depends on what the favorable outcome is attributed to. We also examine whether a brief reflective exercise about one's own investment goals before decision-making moderates any such effect. Incentivised measures of risk aversion and loss aversion are collected to explore ...
Traditional fired clay bricks dominate the construction sector in Bangladesh, contributing significantly to air pollution and topsoil degradation. Although cleaner, non-fired alternatives like concrete blocks exist, their adoption remains low. This study evaluates whether reducing information frictions and capacity constraints can accelerate adoption of blocks. We implement a three-arm cluster randomized controlled trial across 66 upazilas (sub-districts) in 22 districts (total baseline sample N = 3,056 respondents). Upazilas are randomized within district into: (i) Control (no intervention), (ii) Treatment 1 (T1): information workshop on block usage plus a block supplier directory targeted to contractors, procurement officers, and private clients, and (iii) Treatment 2 (T2): T1 plus ha...
This study explore the impact of AI agents on online communication. We vary the presence of these entities and examine its effects on online interactions.
In this paper, we provide experimental evidence on the effect of improving childcare quality on prices and profits of childcare providers, as well as the effects on families and children. Specifically, we partner with a social enterprise that provides training and mentorship to daycare providers. We randomize the entry of this enterprise into 30 low-income, urban communities of Kenya, leaving 30 communities as comparison. We then analyze the effect of their entry with detailed surveys of approximately 2000 providers. The main outcome measures are the price, quality, profits, and availability of childcare 6 months, and 12 months, and 24 months after entry. We pair that data with 2,100 surveys of families with small children in the same communities to examine the effect of improving child...
Almost 1 billion adults worldwide are unable read or write in any language, with an estimated cost of US$ 5 billion annually to low-income countries (UNESCO 2020). This is of particular concern in West Africa, which has some of the lowest education indicators in the world. In Niger, the subject of our study, adult illiteracy rates are estimated at 70% (USAID 2023). Illiteracy is particularly striking in rural areas and among women. Niger’s ranking in terms of educational attainment is comparable to other Sahelian countries, namely Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali (UNDP 2017). While policymakers and academics alike have focused on primary and secondary education programs, such programs will only have impacts in the medium to long-term. Adult education programs have the potential to brid...
Many of the world's poor live in rural areas in low-income countries that have limited access to paved roads and transportation. Previous evidence suggests that providing bicycles to school girls reduced the gender gap in access to education in India and Zambia but limited research has been conducted on the effect of providing transportation access to adults in these same settings. To address this evidence gap, we are conducting a randomized controlled trial of World Bicycle Relief's Mobilized Communities program in Mumbwa District, Zambia. 120 livelihoods groups and 273 community service workers were randomly assigned to receive a bicycle in June 2023 or to a control group. We collected baseline data immediately prior to bicycle distribution, and will return for endline data collection...
We study whether religion can promote conservation of natural resources. We run a field experiment in rural Burundi with forest users—forest owners and workers such as charcoal producers. Participants are randomly assigned to hear a religious stewardship message, a secular civic-duty message from Burundi’s environmental law, or a neutral message. They then play a public-goods game and decide how much to contribute to forest conservation. Contributions are real: 80% of the conservation account is donated to the office for the protection of forests in Burundi. We compare contributions across groups to test whether religious framing increases cooperation. We also examine heterogeneity by religiosity, affiliation, forest income, and pro-environmental perceptions. The study may inform outrea...
This research project evaluates the causal effect of an information treatment on students’ intentions to participate in international mobility programs. The study focuses on undergraduate students enrolled in the Economics bachelor’s degree (TrEC) at the University of Padua. As part of a broader survey aimed at understanding students’ preferences, expectations, and perceived barriers to mobility, participants will be randomly assigned at the individual level to one of three groups: - Control group receiving general information about mobility opportunities. - Treatment group receiving additional information on the academic benefits of studying abroad. - Treatment group receiving information on both academic and labor market returns. The treatment consists of standardized written inf...