We conduct a field experiment with low-income subjects in Dallas, Texas. We examine voluntary, informal risk sharing using a visual representation of the solidarity game developed for low-literacy populations. We find substantially more ‘fixed gift to loser’ behavior and less...

Behavioral economists have argued that incentives can backfire. In a field experiment, we distribute “no junk mail” stickers to more than 800 households. We introduce information, monitoring, and rewards in treatments. We do not find evidence of motivation crowding out.

We conduct a field experiment on tax compliance, focusing on newly founded firms. As a novelty the effect of tax authorities’ supervision on timely tax payments is examined. Interestingly, results show no positive overall effect of close supervision on tax compliance.

Is India’s high fractionalization associated with mistrust between its two main religious communities? An inter-ethnic trust game field experiment confirms intergroup bias in mutually lower offers between urban Muslims and Hindus in Mumbai. There are no differences in trustworthiness based on...

Using a large natural field experiment, we demonstrate that a small unconditional gift (pen) more than doubled both small (survey) and large (blood donation) responses. We find no evidence that the opportunity for a small response crowded out the larger response; asking participants to also...

We measure willingness to pay for privacy in a field experiment. Participants bought at most one DVD from one of two competing online stores. One store consistently required more sensitive personal data than the other, but otherwise the stores were identical. In one treatment, DVDs were one Euro...

This paper examines the unintended consequences of a policy aimed at improving the groundwater level on crop residue burning in India. The Preservation of Subsoil Water Act, 2009 implemented in two Indian states bans the transplantation of paddy before mid-June to preserve groundwater....

This paper contributes to the literature on the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) by determining the effect of water abundance on an EKC for water pollution. Results indicate that water abundance greatly affects the turning point of an EKC.

We examine the effect of single-sex schooling on students’ competitiveness by studying middle school students in Seoul who were randomly assigned to either single-sex or coeducational schools within their school districts. Contrary to popular belief and existing studies, our results suggest...

This paper studies how much firms make unintentional mistakes in their tax filing, and to what extent this can be affected by providing information about the tax code. We utilize a novel natural field experiment design, where we candidly provide information to firms reporting their VAT within a...