Papers - All

Maria De Paola, Rosetta Lombardo, Valeria Pupo, Vincenzo Scoppa

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

Public speaking is an important skill for career prospects and for leadership positions, but many people tend to avoid it because it generates anxiety. We run a field experiment to analyze whether in an incentivized setting men and women show differences in their willingness to speak in public. The experiment involved more than 500 undergraduate students who could gain two points to add to the final grade of their exam by presenting solutions to a problem set. Students were randomly assigned to present only to the instructor or in front of a large audience (a class of 100 or more). We find that while women are more willing to present face-to-face, they are considerably less likely to give a public presentation. Female aversion to public speaking does not depend on differences in ability, risk aversion, self-confidence and self-esteem. The aversion to public speaking greatly reduces for daughters of working women. From data obtained through an on-line Survey we also show that neither increasing the gains deriving from public speaking nor allowing participants more time to prepare enable to close the gender gap.

Omar Al-Ubaydli, John A List, Claire Mackevicius, Min Sok Lee, Dana L Suskind

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

Policymakers are increasingly turning to insights gained from the experimental method as a means to inform large scale public policies. Critics view this increased usage as premature, pointing to the fact that many experimentally-tested programs fail to deliver their promise at scale. Under this view, the experimental approach drives too much public policy. Yet, if policymakers could be more confident that the original research findings would be delivered at scale, even the staunchest critics would carve out a larger role for experiments to inform policy. Leveraging the economic framework of Al-Ubaydli et al. (2019), we put forward 12 simple proposals, spanning researchers, policymakers, funders, and stakeholders, which together tackle the most vexing scalability threats. The framework highlights that only after we deepen our understanding of the scale up problem will we be on solid ground to argue that scientific experiments should hold a more prominent place in the policymaker's quiver.

Erwin Bulte, John A List, Daan van Soest

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

Incomplete contracts are the rule rather than the exception, and any incentive scheme faces the risk of improving performance on incented aspects of a task at the detriment of performance on non-incented aspects. Recent research documents the effect of loss-framed versus gain-framed incentives on incentivized behavior, but how do such incentives affect overall performance? We explore potential trade-offs by conducting field experiments in an artificial "workplace". We explore two types of incentive spillovers: those contemporaneous to the incented task and those subsequent to the incented task. We report three main results. First, consonant with the extant literature, a loss aversion incentive induces greater effort on the incented task. Second, offsetting this productivity gain, we find that the quality of work decreases if quality is not specified in the incentive contract. Third, we find no evidence of harmful spillover effects to subsequent tasks; if anything, the loss aversion incentive induces more effort in subsequent tasks. Taken together, our results highlight that measuring and accounting for incentive spillovers are important when considering their overall impact.

Bharat Chandar, Ali Hortacsu, John A List, Ian Muir, Jeffrey M Wooldridge

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

Field experiments conducted with the village, city, state, region, or even country as the unit of randomization are becoming commonplace in the social sciences. While convenient, subsequent data analysis may be complicated by the constraint on the number of clusters in treatment and control. Through a battery of Monte Carlo simulations, we examine best practices for estimating unit-level treatment effects in cluster-randomized field experiments, particularly in settings that generate short panel data. In most settings we consider, unit-level estimation with unit fixed effects and cluster-level estimation weighted by the number of units per cluster tend to be robust to potentially problematic features in the data while giving greater statistical power. Using insights from our analysis, we evaluate the effect of a unique field experiment: a nationwide tipping field experiment across markets on the Uber app. Beyond the import of showing how tipping affects aggregate outcomes, we provide several insights on aspects of generating and analyzing cluster-randomized experimental data when there are constraints on the number of experimental units in treatment and control.

Alec Brandon, John A List, Robert D Metcalfe, Michael K Price, Florian Rundhammer

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

This study considers the response of household electricity consumption to social nudges during peak load events. Our investigation considers two social nudges. The first targets conservation during peak load events, while the second promotes aggregate conservation. Using data from a natural field experiment with 42,100 households, we find that both social nudges reduce peak load electricity consumption by 2 to 4% when implemented in isolation and by nearly 7% when implemented in combination. These findings suggest an important role for social nudges in the regulation of electricity markets and a limited role for crowd out effects.

Syon Bhanot, Jiyoung Han, Chaning Jang

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

Restrictions like work requirements and constraints on voucher transfers are often used in social welfare systems, but little empirical evidence exists on their impact on wellbeing. We conducted a 10-day randomized experiment with 432 individuals living below the poverty line in the Kawangware settlement of Nairobi, kenya, testing two elements of social welfare design: workfare versus welfare and restricted versus unrestricted vouchers. Participants were randomly assigned to a "Work" condition, involving daily work for unrestricted vouchers, or one of two "Wait" conditions, involving daily waiting for vouchers that were either unrestricted or partially restricted to staple foods. We find that working improved psychological wellbeing relative to waiting, suggesting that means of implementing welfare programs may have important effects on individuals beyond the impact of monetary benefit alone. Furthermore, although restrictions were inframarginal, partially restricted vouchers crowded-in spending on staple foods, suggesting the existence of a "flypaper effect" in spending from restricted vouchers.

Fulya Ersoy

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

While distance learning has become widespread, causal estimates regarding returns to effort in technology-assisted learning environments are scarce due to high attrition rates and endogeneity of effort. In this paper, I manipulate effort by randomly assigning students different numbers of lessons in a popular online language learning platform. Using administrative data from the platform and the instrumental variables strategy, I find that completing 9 Duolingo lessons, which corresponds to approximately 60 minutes of studying, leads to a 0.057-0.095 standard deviation increase in test scores. Comparisons to the literature and back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that distance learning can be as effective as in-person learning for college students for an introductory language course

Wojciech Hardy, Michal Krawczyk, Joanna Tyrowicz

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

We report results of an experimental study analyzing the effects of Internet piracy on book sales. We conducted a year-long controlled large-scale field experiment with pre-treatment pair matching. Half of the book titles received experiment treatment, in which a specialized agency would immediately remove any unauthorized copy appearing on the Internet. For the other half we merely registered such occurrences, but no countermeasures were taken. For all the titles we obtained print and e-book sales statistics from the publishers. We find that removal of unauthorized copies was an effective method of curbing piracy, but this had no bearing on legal sales.

Syon Bhanot

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

Social norms messaging campaigns are increasingly used to influence human behavior, with social science research generally finding that they have modest but meaningful effects. One aspect of these campaigns in practice has been the inclusion of injunctive norms messaging, designed to convey a social judgement about one's behaviors (often in the form of encouraging or discouraging language, or a visual smiley or frowny face). While some prominent research has provided support for the use of such messaging as a tool for positive behavior change, causal evidence on the effect of injunctive norms messaging as a motivator (as opposed to just one part of a multifaceted messaging campaign) is limited. This paper presents a field experiment on water conservation behavior conducted by an organization in California, involving over 40,000 households, which provides some of the most precise evidence to date regarding the effect of injunctive norms on decision making. I find that not only do injunctive norms encourage conservation behavior, there is also no evidence that they discourage individuals from further attending norms messaging-regardless of whether the social judgement conveyed is negative or positive. Taken together, this suggests that injunctive norms are a useful tool in "nudge"-style campaigns tackling behavior change.

John A List, Julie Pernaudet, Dana L Suskind

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

Socioeconomic inequalities in child development crystallize at early stages, with associated disparities in parental investment in children. A key to understanding the data patterns is to document the sources underlying the observed inequalities. We first show that there are dramatic differences in parental beliefs across socioeconomic backgrounds (SES), with parents of higher SES being more likely to believe that parental investments impact child development. We then use two field experiments targeted to low-SES families to explore the mutability of such beliefs and their link to parental investments. In both cases, we find that parental beliefs about child development are malleable. The less intensive version of the program based on educational videos changes parental beliefs, but fails to lastingly increase parental investments and child outcomes. By contrast, in the more intensive version of our program combining home visits and feedback, the augmented beliefs are associated with enriched parent-child interactions and improved vocabulary, math, and social-emotional skills for the children. Together, these results suggest that changing parental beliefs can be an important pathway to raising parental investments and reducing socioeconomic gaps in children's skills, but that simple informational policies may not be sufficient.

Maya Haran Rosen , Orly Sade

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

Define contribution mechanism combined with a dynamic job market can affect the sum of retirement savings and the choices of plans and products. Hence, it is important for regulators to engage servers to manage the accounts they accumulate over the years. In 2013-2014 the Israeli regulator reached out to the population, recommending the use of a website to help individuals find inactive retirement savings accounts and close them (withdraw the savings or transfer them to active accounts). The government's efforts did not result in the closure of most of the inactive accounts. Proprietary data indicate that those who closed the inactive accounts live in central locations with a higher socioeconomic index. Survey data indicate that those who lacked financial literacy and confidence in their financial knowledge were less likely to take financial actions. Using a controlled field experiment, we also provide evidence that an intervention with a human touch can promote greater involvement.

Shubha Chakravarty, Mattias Lundberg, Plamen Nikolov, Juliane Zenker

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

Lack of skills is arguably one of the most important determinants of high levels of unemployment and poverty. In response, policymakers often initiate vocational training programs in effort to enhance skill formation among the youth. Using a regression-discontinuity design, we examine a large youth training intervention in Nepal. We find, twelve months after the start of the training program, that the intervention generated an increase in non-farm employment of 10 percentage points (ITT estimates) and up to 31 percentage points for program compliers (LATE estimates). We also detect sizable gains in monthly earnings. Women who start self-employment activities inside their homes largely drive these impacts. We argue that low baseline educational levels and non-farm employment levels and Nepal's social and cultural norms towards women drive our large program impacts. Our results suggest that the program enables otherwise underemployed women to earn an income while staying at home - close to household errands and in line with the socio-cultural norms that prevent them from taking up employment outside the house.

John A List

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

These are the slides from John A. List's keynote at the 2022 AFE conference.

Hansika Kapoor, Savita Kulkarni, Anirudh Tagat

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

This study aims to investigate intra-household bargaining outcomes elicited in an artefactual field experiment design where participants completed a purchase task of real commodities. Married couples separately expressed their initial preferences over commodities. The bargaining process in the experiment was exogenously introduced by sharing information about partners' preferences in the treatment group. We hypothesized that the spouse with weaker bargaining position at the household level would consider the information of their partner's preferences while making own consumption decisions more compared to their partner. Therefore, they may deviate from their own preferences when purchasing commodities. More than 230 married couples from two villages in the Tamil Nadu state of India participated in the experiment. It was observed that information about partners' spending preferences resulted in reduced final allocation for female participants. However, the deviation was not significantly different from the original intention to spend. Therefore, information about partners' preferences may not be an effective medium to elicit bargaining power in the context of jointly-consumed household commodities. Subgroup analyses were performed to identify any heterogeneous treatment effects.

Maria De Paola, Francesca Gioia, Vincenzo Scoppa

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

We ran a field experiment to investigate whether competing in rank-order tournaments with different prize spreads affects individual performance. Our experiment involved students from an Italian University who took an exam that was partly evaluated on the basis of relative performance. Students were matched in pairs on the basis of their high school grades and each pair was randomly assigned to one of three different tournaments. Random assignment neutralizes selection effects and allows us to investigate if larger prize spreads increase individual effort. We do not find any positive effect of larger prizes on performance. Furthermore, we show that the effect of prize spreads on students' performance depends on their degree of risk-aversion: competing in tournaments with large spreads negatively affects the performance of risk-averse students, while it does not produce any effect on students who are more prone to taking risks.

Glenn W Harrison, John A List

Cited by*: 644 Downloads*: 105

Experimental economists are leaving the reservation. They are recruiting subjects in the field rather than in the classroom, using field goods rather than induced valuations, and using field context rather than abstract terminology in instructions. We argue that there is something methodologically fundamental behind this trend. Field experiments differ from laboratory experiments in many ways. Although it is tempting to view field experiments as simply less controlled variants of laboratory experiments, we argue that to do so would be to seriously mischaracterize them. What passes for "control" in laboratory experiments might in fact be precisely the opposite if it is artificial to the subject or context of the task. We propose six factors that can be used to determine the field context of an experiment: the nature of the subject pool, the nature of the information that the subjects bring to the task, the nature of the commodity, the nature of the task or trading rules applied, the nature of the stakes, and the environment that subjects operate in.

Hans P Binswanger

Cited by*: 412 Downloads*: 122

Attitudes toward risk were measures in 240 households using two methods: an interview method eliciting certainty equivalents and an experimental gambling approach with real payoffs which, at their maximum, exceeded monthly incomes of unskilled laborers. The interview method is subject to interviewer bias and its results were totally inconsistent with the experimental measures of risk aversion. Experimental measures indicate that, at high payoff levels, virtually all individuals are moderately risk-averse with little variation according to personal characteristics. Wealth tends to reduce risk aversion slightly, but its effect is not statistically significant.

Glenn W Harrison, Morten I Lau, Elisabet E Rutstrom

Cited by*: 378 Downloads*: 31

We estimate individual risk attitudes using controlled experiments in the field in Denmark. The experiments were carried out across Denmark using a representative sample of 253 people between 19 and 75 years of age. Risk attitudes are estimated for various individuals differentiated by socio-demographic characteristics. Our results indicate that the average Dane is risk averse, and that risk neutrality is an inappropriate assumption to apply. We also find that risk attitudes vary significantly with respect to several important socio-demographic variables such as age and education. However, we do not find any effect of sex on risk attitudes. Copyright The editors of the "Scandinavian Journal of Economics" 2007 .

Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Esther Duflo

Cited by*: 336 Downloads*: 40

This paper uses political reservations for women in India to study the impact of women's leadership on policy decisions. In 1998, one third of all leadership positions of Village Councils in West Bengal were randomly selected to be reserved for a woman: in these councils only women could be elected to the position of head. Village Councils are responsible for the provision on many local public good in rural areas. Using a data set we collected on 165 Village Councils, we compare the type of public goods provided in reserved and unreserved Villages Councils. We show that women invest more in infrastructure that is directly relevant to the needs of rural women (water, fuel, and roads), while men invest more in education. Women are more likely to participate in the policy-making process if the leader of their village council is a woman.

Steven D Levitt, John A List

Cited by*: 321 Downloads*: 96

A critical question facing experimental economists is whether behavior inside the laboratory is a good indicator of behavior outside the laboratory. To address that question, we build a model in which the choices that individuals make depend not just on financial implications, but also on the nature and extent of scrutiny by others, the particular context in which a decision is embedded, and the manner in which participants and tasks are selected. We present empirical evidence demonstrating the importance of these various factors. To the extent that lab and naturally occurring environments systematically differ on any of these dimensions, the results obtained inside and outside the lab need not correspond. Focusing on experiments designed to measure social preferences, we discuss the extent to which the existing laboratory results generalize to naturally-occurring markets. We summarize cases where the lab may understate the importance of social preferences as well as instances in which the lab might exaggerate their importance. We conclude by emphasizing the importance of interpreting laboratory and field data through the lens of theory.