Policymakers routinely make high-stakes funding decisions. Assessing the value of a program is difficult and may be affected by bounded rationality. In two experiments with U.S. policymakers and the general public, we find that respondents’ valuations of programs are inelastic with respect to...

The opioid epidemic is a major public health problem that affects millions of people around the world. This paper addresses one challenge identified on the demand side of the epidemic: A large proportion of patients prescribed opioids lose track of their unused pills or save them for future use....

We discuss eight randomized evaluations intended to increase vaccination uptake conducted by the US General Services Administration’s Office of Evaluation Sciences (OES). These evaluations had a median sample size of 55,000, deployed a variety of behaviorally-informed direct communications,...

We analyze data from two universities that allowed students to conceal grades from their transcripts during the Covid-19 pandemic. Across both institutions, we observe a significant and substantial gender concealment gap: women are less likely than men to conceal grades that would harm their...

The urban poor in developing countries face challenging living environments, which may interfere with good sleep. Using actigraphy to measure sleep objectively, we find that low-income adults in Chennai, India sleep only 5.5 hours per night on average despite spending 8 hours in bed. Their sleep...

This paper measures sleep among the urban poor in India and estimates the economic returns to increased sleep. Adults in Chennai have strikingly low quantity and quality of sleep relative to typical guidelines: despite spending 8 hours in bed, they achieve only 5.6 hours per night of sleep, with...