AEA RCT Registry currently lists 8588 studies with locations in 167 countries.
Since the pandemic, working a couple of days per week remotely from home has become the norm in many organizations. This transition, while granting newfound flexibility, also presents challenges. Employees may feel compelled to remain constantly connected to the workplace, particularly because digital communication tools enable virtual accessibility from anywhere. Research suggests a correlation between employee well-being and productivity regarding email and meeting practices. In this research, we conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) within a Belgian public administration to assess the impact of nudges (focusses) aimed at alleviating digital communication overload. The study seeks to assess how these nudges affect employee productivity and well-being. The intervention involv...
We study the consumption behavior of users of several popular mobile sportsbooks in a two-month longitudinal survey. We do not reveal our research question publicly to preserve the integrity of the trial. See the pre-analysis plan for details.
Following a successful pilot study (AEARCTR-0006390), the California Policy Lab will evaluate the impact of the Santa Clara County Public Defender’s Office’s Pre-Arraignment Representation & Review Team (PARR) during the expansion and scale-up of the program on pre-trial detention, release at arraignment, and case outcomes, and longer term recidivism outcomes. The study will use a random process to assign legal staff to clients who are booked on felony charges and not released within 24 hours of booking. Specifically, using a pre-determined schedule, legal staff will provide PARR services to clients booked 6 days per week, rotating the 7th day across days of the week over the study period.
Our experimental design takes inspiration from the ideas discussed in Schwartzstein and Sunderam (2021) and explores when and why persuasion using models might occur.
Workers and firms in low and middle-income countries operate in a credit-constrained environment characterized by asymmetric information. Firms are unaware of the productivity and trustworthiness of the worker, and workers are unsure whether the firms will pay them on time or at all. Neither the worker nor the firm can commit to a contract. Theory suggests that a consequence of these market failures and the firm's own credit constraints is that firms should offer back-loaded contracts. We will test this theoretical prediction in an experiment where we offer to hire workers for firms with different payment structures. Workers dislike back-loaded contracts because they can't trust the firm to abide by them (due to limited commitment on the firm side) and due to consumption credit constrai...
This project studies the role of risk-sharing and social networks in the mitigation of local environmental risks. We focus on two aspects: first, risk mitigation through informal insurance contracts between households; and, second, the importance of social monitoring for enforcing informal insurance contracts. Our objective is to understand whether commitment contracts between pairs of households meant to insure the consumption of either household can help mitigate local environmental risk. To test this, we have chosen as context a major disaster of natural origin: toxic levels of arsenic in groundwater pumped by millions of private wells in Bangladesh. We further hypothesize that compliance in informal agreements to cooperate needs monitoring by local peers for enforcement. To test ou...
In Senegal, a significant share of adolescents who leave formal education before completing middle school seek to learn skills through informal apprenticeships, and young adults who have completed informal apprenticeships have more stable employment than similarly skilled youths who have not chosen this path. Despite its attractiveness among less educated youth, informal apprenticeship training in Senegal is characterized by low quality, long duration (five years on average) and a lack of certification. Neither the sectors involved, nor the apprenticeships are regulated, and so the content of the training depends only on a workshop’s activity, which varies considerably within trades. To improve skills transfers through the traditional apprenticeship system, the PEJA program (“Improving ...
Notions of rest and self-care – be it meditation, napping, or a walk in nature – have become increasingly popular, and recent economic research suggests these activities can improve not only mental well-being but also performance overall. Nevertheless, uptake and engagement of these kinds of activities remain low – especially in stressful labor market situations. In the context of online labor markets, we explore workers’ beliefs on and decisions to invest in rest. We document the productivity effects of mandated rest periods during a strenuous work task. Furthermore, we look at who chooses to invest in rest when given the option and ask whether “break-skippers” and “break-takers” are maximizing their earnings.
We aim at exploring the effects of the timing of payment on employees’ behaviour in an employer-employee relationship and its mechanisms.
Female-owned firms in Sub-Saharan Africa have lower profits and less access to capital. A common approach to promoting capital access for female business owners is to reserve loans or other capital for women. However, loan application processes remain a barrier to access. Using an information experiment with female small business owners in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, we study whether limiting loans to female business owners increases women's willingness to apply for those loans. This is a follow-up study to "Gender, Competition, and Requests for Capital: Experimental Evidence on Female Prioritization" (AEARCTR-0011271).