AEA RCT Registry currently lists 11745 studies with locations in 170 countries.
We investigate the impact of a group loan product and a smartphone application for savings groups members in Malawi and Uganda. Linking savings groups with financial service providers could alleviate financial barriers for many savings groups participants who tend to be relatively poor, rural, and with limited access to capital. Meanwhile, digital ledgers, managed via a smartphone application, could solve many of the operational challenges faced by savings groups in recording transactions in a physical group ledger or individual passbooks, and could help improve the availability of financial information to formal credit providers. The partners, including IPA, are working together to determine if economic and social wellbeing increases as a result of these two interventions.
Socioeconomic disparities in exposure to air pollution and in defensive investments raise questions about how the efficiency and distributions of environmental public service programs. This project will address how pecuniary and non-pecuniary application costs affect take-up and targeting of a subsidized air-purifier program. We will conduct a field experiment in which we mail offer letters for discounted or free air purifiers to approximately 90,000 households in California. Across eight treatment arms, we will vary subsidy rates, the length of the application form, documentation requirements, additional information about the application process, and assistance for the application process, and additional information about the health impact of air pollution. We combine the application d...
This study investigates how professional identity priming and competitive pressure affect dishonest behavior among bank employees. Conducting a field experiment with employees (branch managers, relationship managers, and tellers) of a large rural commercial bank in China, we examine two main interventions. First, we employ a priming intervention based on the timing of identity-salience questions. A randomly assigned treatment group answers a series of questions regarding professional identity and the "pride and honor" of the financial profession prior to the main decision-making tasks (the priming condition), whereas the control group answers these same questions at the end of the survey (serving as a baseline without induced identity salience). Second, we randomize the order of an ince...
MDRC, in partnership with MEF Associates and Abt Associates, is conducting an evaluation of Central City Concern (CCC), as part of broader study called Building Evidence on Employment Strategies (BEES). BEES is funded by Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation within the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. CCC is an organization in Portland, Oregon that primarily serves adults with substance abuse disorders and provides treatment, health care, housing services, and employment services. The evaluation will be focused on two specific housing programs that CCC operates for those exiting a CCC-operated detox center. Each program offers a suite of recovery, housing, and employment services. The evaluation is using a randomized co...
Neonatal mortality remains a major public health concern in Nepal despite progress in maternal and child health. The national neonatal mortality rate is approximately 21 per 1,000 live births, with disproportionately higher burden in Madhesh and Sudurpaschim provinces Birth asphyxia is a leading and largely preventable cause of early neonatal death particularly in public-sector primary health facilities where provider competency, skill retention and resuscitation readiness remain inconsistent. Evidence shows that timely resuscitation within the “Golden Minute” can avert a substantial proportion of these deaths; however, one-time training is insufficient because skills deteriorate without regular practice and supportive supervision. This study proposes a facility-level cluster randomize...
Japan has one of the highest levels of public debt among developed countries. This study examines people’s perceptions of public finance as a potential factor related to government deficits. Using an online survey experiment with approximately 1,000 respondents in Japan, this study examines how people’s preferences for government spending and taxation change when they receive information about public finances. Specifically, the study examines whether (i) providing information on the size of central government debt changes people’s preferences regarding central government spending and taxation and (ii) providing information on the average share of own-source revenue in municipalities changes preferences for municipal government spending in Japan.
The projecte volves around a two-wave online survey experiment on a quota sample of approximately 3,000 Italian Young adults, fielded around the March 2026 constitutional referendum on the separation of judicial careers. The study pursues two research questions. First, we examine whether providing factual information about youth political participation — drawn from two methodologically distinct sources generating a low and a high estimate — affects political and civic engagement, measured through a pre-specified Political Engagement Index, referendum voting propensity, and willingness to sign a petition on youth political representation. Second, we examine whether corrective information about four misperceptions — the prevalence of false accusations of sexual violence, the rate at whi...
I consider the decision to appear in eviction court as dependent on (1) whether the tenant is aware that a court date is scheduled, which I call awareness frictions and (2) conditional on awareness, whether the tenant believes that appearing in court will lead to better outcomes, which I call belief-based frictions. To test for the role of these information frictions, I conduct a field experiment targeting Philadelphia tenants who have been filed against for an eviction and are awaiting their court hearing. I randomize tenants into three groups: those who receive no information, those who receive information to reduce awareness frictions, and those who receive information to reduce awareness and belief-based frictions.
Low levels of early childhood literacy remain a major constraint to human capital accumulation in low- and middle-income countries. While parental engagement in early learning activities—such as reading to young children—is known to be crucial, take-up of these practices is often limited by constraints beyond material resources, including parental beliefs, social norms, and intra-household decision-making. This paper studies a large-scale clustered randomized controlled trial implemented in Jordan that aims to increase parent–child reading among households with children aged 1 to 18 months. The intervention combines a book-gifting program delivered through public health facilities with informational components targeting parents’ beliefs about the returns to early reading and prevailing ...
This study examines how customizing motivational messages for volunteer agents by personality traits influences performance and motivation in the context of agricultural extension in Rwanda. We administered a phone survey with 10,187 village agricultural volunteers (FPs) to gather personality traits using Susceptibility to Persuasion Scale (STPS) questions and designed four sets of SMS task reminders that appeal to four different STPS personality traits. We then randomly assigned volunteers to receive (i) no SMS messages, (ii) randomly assigned SMS messages, (iii) personality-matched messages, or (iv) personality-mismatched messages. In addition we cross-randomize whether FPs receive a reminder of the performance goals they set. We will compare self-reported performance and motivation ...