AEA RCT Registry

Field	Before	After
Trial Title	The Welfare Effects of Information Nudges - Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment	The Welfare Effects of Persuasion and Taxation: Theory and Evidence from the Field
Trial Status	in_development	completed
JEL Code(s)		D61, D83, H21, Q41, Q48
Last Published	June 17, 2019 09:40 AM	August 13, 2020 05:36 AM
Study Withdrawn		No
Data Collection Complete		Yes
Additional Keyword(s)		persuasion, optimal taxation, internality taxes, field experiments, energy efficiency, behavioral public economics
Pi as first author	No	Yes

Field	Before	After
Paper Abstract		How much information should governments reveal to consumers if consumption choices have uninternalized consequences to society? How does an alternative tax policy compare to information disclosure? We develop a price theoretic model of information design that allows empiricists to identify the welfare effects of any arbitrary information policy. Based on this model, we run a natural field experiment in cooperation with a large European appliance retailer and randomize information regarding the financial benefits of energy-efficient household lighting among more than 640,000 subjects. We find that more informative signals strongly decrease demand for energy efficiency, while less informative signals increase demand. More information reduces social welfare because the increase in consumer surplus is outweighed by the rise in environmental externalities. By randomizing product prices, we identify the optimal tax vector as an alternative policy and show that sizable taxes on energy-inefficient products yield larger welfare gains than any information policy.
Paper Citation		Rodemeier, Matthias, and Andreas L¨oschel. 2020. “The Welfare Effects of Persuasion and Taxation: Theory and Evidence from the Field.” CESifo Working Paper No. 8259.
Paper URL		https://drive.google.com/file/d/13v98GOpVp_vC6OzPWSqJtFcFPuAYmo-a/view

Fields Changed