AEA RCT Registry currently lists 12160 studies with locations in 170 countries.
There is growing interest in whether Generative AI technology has the potential to transform education and offer personalized learning for all. Early research, however, shows challenges with implementation and structure for getting students to use it effectively. To test AI's potential and develop best practices for engaging students, we propose a student-level, within-class randomized evaluation of NUMI, an online platform designed for research that pairs mastery pacing with a guard-railed AI math tutor. In partnership with the Hamilton County Department of Education (HCDE) and at least 50-70 Grades 4-9 teachers (~1,500-2,100 students), each trimester students are randomly assigned in a 2x2 design — Mastery vs. no Mastery; AI-Tutor vs. no AI-Tutor. We will measure immediate learning on...
Political connections shape access to economic opportunities in many developing countries, yet little is known about how they influence educational and occupational choices before labor-market entry. This paper argues that political connections act as an informal insurance device in rigid labor markets by increasing access to desirable public-sector jobs. Anticipating these advantages, connected individuals are more likely to invest in education and pursue public-sector careers. Using household survey data from Benin, we show that politically connected individuals are more likely to aspire to top-tier public-sector occupations, less likely to pursue entrepreneurship, less likely to drop out of school, and more likely to aspire to higher education. To further examine the underlying mecha...
This study investigates how behavioural barriers constrain parental engagement in their children’s education in Khairpur district, Sindh, and how behaviourally informed communication interventions can improve both engagement and student learning outcomes. The research combines a behavioural diagnostic with a school level randomised controlled trial (RCT) measuring the impact of a parental behavioural change communication intervention against a control group. The study focuses on government schools and follows a cohort of Grade 4 students (who have now moved to Grade 5) and their caregivers, measuring parental engagement, student cognitive and non cognitive skills, student retention, and intermediate mechanisms such as time use, parental investments, and school-level practices on parenta...
Impulso Chileno is a program run by Fundación Luksic that supports small business owners in Chile through a combination of non-reimbursable cash grants and access to a digital training platform called La Brújula ("The Compass"), which offers asynchronous content on topics such as value proposition, sales channels, accounting, and business management. The program targets formalized entrepreneurs with monthly sales between CLP 500,000 and CLP 2,000,000 (roughly USD 500–2,000). This study evaluates the seventh edition of the program (ICH7) using a randomized controlled trial. It seeks to answer two questions: first, whether receiving the program improves business performance compared to not receiving financial support; and second, whether larger grants produce larger effects than smaller ...
This project seeks to evaluate the impact of a teacher training program aimed at implementing playful socio-emotional learning strategies (SEL Kernels) on the development of socio-emotional skills, as well as on underlying neurobiological correlates and internalizing and externalizing symptoms in children aged 8 to 12 years. The study also considers the perspectives of teachers and caregivers through assessments of emotional, social, and psychological well-being, classroom climate, teacher self-efficacy, growth mindset, and children’s behavioral and emotional functioning. The study considers the participation of an estimated total of 1,440 children aged between 8 and 12 years, corresponding to students from 3rd to 5th grade of primary school located in the Metropolitan Region of Chile. ...
This study uses a randomized controlled trial to evaluate whether involving other household members in the training process of Antioquia's Departmental Care System (SCA) shifts the distribution of unpaid care work and related outcomes among women caregivers in Colombia. The experiment is embedded in the 2026 cohort of the SCA's formative program across 51 prioritized municipalities. Using a 2x2 factorial design, we evaluate two household-inclusive interventions: a WhatsApp-based information campaign delivering content for each thematic component of the formative program, in which both the participating woman and a co-resident adult household member she nominates receive an infogram and audio message summarizing that component's main learning and prompting household conversation on care ...
This is a longer-term follow up from an existing randomized controlled trial, registered under entry AEARCTR-0013145. We study how shifting the weight placed on different hiring criteria in an applicant recommendation algorithm impacts employment outcomes for applicants and firms, using a field experiment on a large online jobs platform.
This study examines how alternative decision procedures affect choices between risky lotteries. In an online, incentivized, within-subject experiment, participants repeatedly choose between pairs of lotteries under six different procedures: direct choice (benchmark), random default, delegation to a random device, randomized advice, and two procedures combining the random default with delegation to a random device or randomized advice. We study whether and how these procedures shift choice behavior relative to direct choice and random default, and whether procedural effects correlate with choice-level and individual-level measures of decision complexity.
The rise in negative body image has become a pressing global health concern increasingly linked to social media’s promotion of narrow and often unattainable beauty ideals through idealized appearance content. To date, most efforts to address this issue have focused on platform-enforced content moderation, yet such top-down approaches have shown limited effectiveness, as they often lack user agency. In response, this study introduces user-driven content moderation (UDCM), a novel, user-centric approach grounded in emotion regulation theory, whereby individuals remove distressing content using existing platform features.To evaluate this approach, we will conduct a one-week experimental study with female Instagram users. Participants in the treatment group will be trained in UDCM to remove...
Strategic bullshit, defined as uninformed, but goal-oriented communication, is assumed to affect the behavior of the recipients (Frankfurt 2005). We conduct lab experiments to assess, whether the strategic bullshit broadcasted by a sender can sway the participants in a common-pool resource (CPR) game to adapt their extraction levels. The CPR has an unknown tipping-point. If total extraction surpasses the tipping-point, the resource’s regeneration rate falls to a low level. The senders either receive a bonus, if the tipping-point is surpassed (“pro-depletion”), or if it is not surpassed (“pro-sustainability”). Hence, even if they are not informed on the tipping-point, the senders may attempt to communicate strategically to achieve their pro-depletion or pro-sustainability goal. The CPR p...