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....

Building on theoretical and empirical literatures showing that choices not only reflect but also create preferences, we develop a two-stage incentivized intervention to promote pro-sociality. In the first stage, participants are incentivized to complete a compound task consisting of a targeted...

This paper uses a natural field experiment to examine the effectiveness of specific nudges on tax compliance amongst firms and the self-employed in the Dominican Republic. In collaboration with the Dominican Republic's tax authority, we designed messages for more than 28,000 self-employed...

We partnered with Alaska's Pick.Click.Give. Charitable Contributions Program to implement a statewide natural field experiment with 540,000 Alaskans designed to explore whether targeted appeals emphasizing donor benefits through warm glow impact donations. Results highlight the relative import...

The behavioral revolution within economics has been largely driven by psychological insights, with the sister sciences playing a lesser role. This study leverages insights from sociology to explore the role of neighborhoods on human capital formation at an early age. We do so by estimating the...

The literature on pro-social behavior shows that older children are more generous than younger children; however, the level of individual generosity is heterogeneous even between children of the same age. This paper investigates whether a child’s popularity affects a child’s generosity. Our...

We document the effectiveness of robo calls for increasing voter participation despite most published research finding little or no effect of automated calls. We establish this finding in a large field experiment in a targeted, partisan get-out-the-vote campaign. Our experimental design includes...

Head Start and other publicly supported preschools are required to spend substantial funds promoting family engagement, which is a key element of improving child skills. Yet, parent engagement with preschools tends to be low. To increase parental attendance at school-sponsored family-engagement...

We study the demand for government participation in China’s venture capital and private equity market. We conduct a large-scale, non-deceptive field experiment in collaboration with the leading industry service provider, through which we survey both sides of the market: the capital investors...

Political campaigns spend millions of dollars each voting cycle on persuading voters, and it is well established that these campaigns do affect voting decisions. What is less understood is what element of campaigning — the content of the message or the delivery method itself — sways voters,...