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Field
Experimental Design (Public)
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Before
Experiment 1:
We expect treatment effects on our primary outcomes to be concentrated among high-risk pupils, and among pupils who underestimate the returns to high-school completion and higher education. We expect our primary outcome regression to take the following form:
Y = b1 T + b2 T*L + b3 T*E + b4 T*L*E + b5 L + b6 E + b7 X + S + e
where
Y is our primary outcome
T is assignment to the information treatment
L is an indicator for low risk (the number of friends interested in the gang career, using the same threshold as Y)
E is a measure of erroneous prior beliefs, centered at zero, where positive values imply overestimating returns to legal careers
X is a set of pre-information experiment control variables taken from survey and administrative data, selected using the double lasso method on primary outcomes
S is a set of school fixed effects
e is an error term (not clustered)
We are primarily interested in b1, the effect of the information treatment on gang entry among high risk youth. We also expect b3 to be greater than zero, implying that impacts are concentrated among youth that underestimate returns to non-criminal careers.
Experiment 2:
Experiment 2 began in September 2023 at the time of this update.
As with experiment 1, we expect treatment effects on our primary outcomes to be concentrated among high-risk pupils. In this case, also among pupils with high expectations of non-pecuniary returns to criminal/gang careers, such as status and enjoyability. We expect our primary outcome regression to take the following form:
Y = a1 T + a2 T*L + a3 T*E + a4 T*L*E + a5 L + a6 E + a7 X + S + e
where
Y is our primary outcome
T is assignment to the information treatment
L is an indicator for low risk (the number of friends interested in the gang career, using the same threshold as Y)
E is a measure of expected non-pecuniary returns to criminal/gang careers
X is a set of pre-information experiment control variables taken from survey and administrative data, selected using the double lasso method on primary outcomes
S is a set of school fixed effects
e is an error term (not clustered)
We are primarily interested in a1, the effect of the information treatment on gang entry among high risk youth. We also expect a3 to be lower than zero, implying that impacts are concentrated among youth that have high expectations on non-pecuniary returns to non-criminal careers.
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After
Experiment 1:
We expect treatment effects on our primary outcomes to be concentrated among high-risk pupils, and among pupils who underestimate the returns to high-school completion and higher education. We expect our primary outcome regression to take the following form:
Y = b1 T + b2 T*L + b3 T*E + b4 T*L*E + b5 L + b6 E + b7 X + S + e
where
Y is our primary outcome
T is assignment to the information treatment
L is an indicator for low risk (the number of friends interested in the gang career, using the same threshold as Y)
E is a measure of erroneous prior beliefs, centered at zero, where positive values imply overestimating returns to legal careers
X is a set of pre-information experiment control variables taken from survey and administrative data, selected using the double lasso method on primary outcomes
S is a set of school fixed effects
e is an error term (not clustered)
We expect b1 to be positive when the outcome is legal income, and negative when the outcome is gang interest. We also expect the effects to be larger for youth with priors that overestimate legal incomes, and so we are also interested in b3.
Experiment 2:
Experiment 2 began in September 2023 at the time of this update.
As with experiment 1, we expect treatment effects on our primary outcomes to be concentrated among high-risk pupils. In this case, also among pupils with high expectations of non-pecuniary returns to criminal/gang careers, such as status and enjoyability. We expect our primary outcome regression to take the following form:
Y = a1 T + a2 T*L + a3 T*E + a4 T*L*E + a5 L + a6 E + a7 X + S + e
where
Y is our primary outcome
T is assignment to the information treatment
L is an indicator for low risk (the number of friends interested in the gang career, using the same threshold as Y)
E is a measure of expected non-pecuniary returns to criminal/gang careers
X is a set of pre-information experiment control variables taken from survey and administrative data, selected using the double lasso method on primary outcomes
S is a set of school fixed effects
e is an error term (not clustered)
When Y is a measure of non-pecuniary benefits, we expect a1 to be negative. We also expect the effects to be larger for youth with priors that non-pecuniary benefits are high, and so we are also interested in a3.
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