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Increasing employer compliance with state auto-IRA plan

Last registered on February 24, 2026
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Increasing employer compliance with state auto-IRA plan
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0017974
Initial registration date
February 23, 2026

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
February 24, 2026, 8:44 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
February 24, 2026, 11:21 AM EST

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

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Primary Investigator

Name
Giovanny Martinez Rodriguez
Affiliation
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Jessica Lasky-Fink
PI Affiliation

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2026-02-19
End date
2026-04-03
Keywords
Behavior, Finance & Microfinance, Governance
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
This project will evaluate the impact of outreach strategies aimed at encouraging non-compliant employers (i.e., have not previously registered or contacted the program) to comply with their state’s auto-IRA program – a retirement savings program offered by the state for employees whose employers do not offer their own qualifying plan. We will test the overall impact of simplified formal communication, as well as two different types of behaviorally informed messages, on program registration (or reporting an exemption) and follow-up information provision by the state.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Lasky-Fink, Jessica and Giovanny Martinez Rodriguez. 2026. "Increasing employer compliance with state auto-IRA plan." AEA RCT Registry. February 24. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.17974-1.1
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
We will randomly assign employers to one of the three conditions with equal probabilities:

Control - Status quo: the current compliance letter used by the state.
Message A - Benefits: a simplified, formal letter highlighting benefits of program participation for employees and the workforce.
Message B - Process: a simplified, formal letter highlighting how easy and costless the process is for the employer.

Each letter asks employers to either register for the state auto-IRA program, or report that they are exempt from the program because they offer a qualifying retirement plan. Both actions are taken via a state website.
Intervention Start Date
2026-02-19
Intervention End Date
2026-04-03

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Initiation of registration or exemption process
Registration or exemption submission
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Initiation of registration or exemption process: an indicator for beginning the registration or exemption process via the state website in the four weeks following the mail date. Note: this outcome depends on data availability; if data on process initiation are not available, our primary outcome will be registration or exemption, as detailed below.

Registration or exemption submission: an indicator for submitting the state auto-IRA registration for or the exemption form in the four weeks following the mail date.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Employer Upload of Employee Information
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Employer Upload of Employee Information: among employers who register for the state auto-IRA program, we will construct an indicator for uploading the employee information required for program implementation – the next step in the registration process – in the four weeks following the mail date.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
In a stratified randomization, the 8,174 employers that are part of the experimental universe will be randomly assigned to one of the three conditions with equal probabilities:

Status quo: the current compliance letter used by the state.
Message A - Benefits: a simplified, formal letter highlighting benefits of program participation for employees and the workforce.
Message B - Process: a simplified, formal letter highlighting how easy and costless the process is for the employer.

Each letter asks employers to either register for the state auto-IRA program, or report that they are exempt from the program because they offer a qualifying retirement plan. Both actions are taken via a state website.

The randomization will be stratified by (a) employer location in a metropolitan vs non-metropolitan geographic area, based on zip code areas and the RUCA codes; (b) a categorical measure of employer size; and (c) a binary variable for whether a uniquely identified employer shares an address with another employer in our sample.

We will check randomization balance across the stratification variables using a multinomial regression model (for differences across all three treatment conditions). If a joint significance test of all covariates yields p < .05, we will re-randomize.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer
Randomization Unit
Employers
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
Status quo: the current compliance letter used by the state (N = 2,728 employers)
Message A - Benefits: a simplified, formal letter highlighting benefits of program participation for employees and the workforce (N = 2,725 employers)
Message B - Process: a simplified, formal letter highlighting how easy and costless the process is for the employer (N = 2,721 employers)
Sample size: planned number of observations
8,174 employers
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Status quo: the current compliance letter used by the state (N = 2,728 employers)
Message A - Benefits: a simplified, formal letter highlighting benefits of program participation for employees and the workforce (N = 2,725 employers)
Message B - Process: a simplified, formal letter highlighting how easy and costless the process is for the employer (N = 2,721 employers)
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Based on the experimental universe of 8,174 employers, and assuming that, at baseline, 2% of employers will initiate the process after being contacted, power of 80%, and a standard alpha of 0.05, the minimum detectable effect (MDE) is 0.9 pp for the pairwise comparison of simplified outreach vs. status quo outreach, and 1 pp for the pairwise comparison between employers assigned to receive Message A - Benefits vs. Message B - Process.
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Harvard University-Area
IRB Approval Date
2026-01-27
IRB Approval Number
IRB26-0063
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

Analysis plan

MD5: b7ce5c590e871fbf6a09a0724e1d20bf

SHA1: 367791a9345319574f813c30db945d37bbf782ae

Uploaded At: February 23, 2026