AEA RCT Registry currently lists 12716 studies with locations in 171 countries.
A growing body of research suggests that gender norms within the household play an important role in constraining female labor supply (Bursztyn, Fujiwara, and Pallais 2017; Folke and Rickne 2020; Bursztyn, González, and Yanagizawa-Drott 2020). One norm that has attracted particular attention is the “breadwinning” norm – the idea that in heterosexual married couples, husbands should earn more than their wives. Despite considerable work in this area, there is still ongoing debate as to whether these norms explain the high density of married women who earn slightly less than their husbands (Bertrand, Kamenica, and Pan 2015; Zinovyeva and Tverdostup 2021; Gupta 2022). Moreover, if these norms are binding, it is unclear whether they are driven by self-image or social-image concerns and how t...
This study explores how gender affects communication between borrowers and lenders. In partnership with a bank in Afghanistan, we invited micro-entrepreneurs to apply for small loans. The application collects standard financial information, and it also gives borrowers the opportunity to write a message to the loan officer explaining, in their own words, why their ability and willingness to repay can be trusted. Each applicant can provide one explanation addressed to a male loan officer and one addressed to a female loan officer. Providing financial information is mandatory, but writing a message is optional. By analyzing the narratives written by the same applicant, we assess whether individuals—and particularly female applicants—communicate differently when the message is directed to a...
We test how different job amenities in terms of flexibility affect the interest of people to accept work offers and how this relationship varies across gender. In addition, we will investigate how demands for flexibility affects the allocation of talent.
We test whether the inclusion of the Mexican flag tricolor (red/white/green) in a visual card depicting a beneficiary state affects participants' subsequent memory of which state the card depicted. The intervention is a 10-second exposure to one of 12 cards (6 Mexican states x 2 versions: tricolor styling vs. teal styling, applied to the card border and to the donor-state name) presented within a brief in-person survey administered on participants' own devices. The hypothesis under test is one of **equivalence**: flag exposure does not impair state retention relative to neutral exposure within a margin of plus-or-minus 10 percentage points. The primary outcome is whether the participant correctly identifies the donor state by either open-ended recall or multiple-choice recognition. The ...
This study evaluates whether access to Google Gemini Notebook, an AI-powered study tool available to ASU students, helps undergraduate students build more effective study habits and improve academic performance, and whether the tool is more effective when paired with personalized guidance about evidence-based study practices. The study is a three-arm randomized controlled trial among undergraduate students enrolled in targeted intermediate economics and business courses at Arizona State University. Consenting students complete a baseline survey after the first course exam and are randomly assigned to: (1) a control group receiving the standard course experience and neutral study-related contact; (2) a Gemini Notebook-only group receiving access-oriented guidance, including an introducto...
This study investigates "shallow inference" in hiring evaluations, defined as the failure of observers to account for the difference in socio-economic constraints behind observed performance signals. Using a vignette experiment with MBA and executive MBA students acting as evaluators, the research explores how markers of socio-economic status (SES) influence beliefs regarding underlying ability and organizational fit. The design utilizes several rounds of relative assessments varying SES indicators such as first-in-family university status and stereotyped extracurricular activities. The study tests whether evaluators naturally correct for SES-driven disadvantages or if explicit contextual information regarding economic constraints and challenges that the applicant had to overcome is re...
This study characterizes MBA students' mental models of monetary incentives, meaning their subjective beliefs about how different compensation contracts affect employee behavior.
This study examines whether greater engagement with career resources during college helps improve undergraduate students' career outcomes.
Cash Transfers directed to disadvantaged high school graduates can alleviate liquidity constraints, allowing them to search longer for a better job match or to use the transfer for additional educational investments. However, transfer gains may not reach their full transformative potential if the barriers shaping post-graduation decisions are multidimensional. Informational frictions on the returns to higher education programs and a lack of information on financial planning can lead to suboptimal investments that would be beneficial for students´ future careers. Students may also face behavioral frictions- such as low self-confidence and self-efficacy, present-bias and lack of aspirations, resulting in suboptimal job-search effort and educational/occupational choices. We plan to conduct...
This study examines the influence of role models on students’ academic aspirations, motivation, and performance. We implement a randomized controlled trial in a large undergraduate class with a two-layer randomization design. First, half of the students are exposed to short biographies of six successful eminent young economists who overcame various challenges, while the other half serve as a control group. Second, students are randomly assigned to small working groups of 3–4 peers, which generates exogenous variation in exposure to high-achieving classmates. This design allows us to separately identify the effects of “distant” role models—prominent figures outside the classroom—and “proximate” role models—high-performing peers within the classroom. By comparing the impacts of these two ...