Recent literature promotes commitment products as a new remedy for overcoming self-control problems and savings constraints. Committing to a welfare-improving contract requires knowledge about one's preferences, including biases and inconsistencies. If agents are imperfectly informed about their...

A substantial body of research investigates the design of incentives in firms, yet less is known about incentives in organizations that hire individuals to perform tasks with positive social spillovers. We conduct a field experiment in which agents hired by a public health organization are...

Ethnic favoritism is seen as antithetical to development. This paper provides credible quantifi…cation of the extent of ethnic favoritism using data on road building in Kenyan districts across the 1963-2011 period. Guided by a model it then examines whether the transition in and out of...

Tropical deforestation accounts for almost one-…fifth of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and threatens the worlds most diverse ecosystems. The prevalence of illegal forest extraction in the tropics suggests that understanding the incentives of local bureaucrats and politicians who enforce...

We discuss how the use of field experiments sheds light on long standing research questions relating to firm behavior. We present insights from two classes of experiments: within and across firms, and draw common lessons from both sets. Field experiments within firms generally aim to shed light...

We explore the consequence for taxation and regulation of bonus pay when investors are protected by taxpayers from downside risk. The paper develops a model where workers in financial sector firms make decisions about effort and risktaking which are influenced by the structure of bonus pay....

This paper presents evidence on the consequences of the 1912 introduction of "quasiuniversal" male suffrage in Italy. The reform increased the electorate from slightly less than three million to 8,650,000 and left the electoral rules and the district boundaries unchanged. This allows us to...

We study how inefficiencies of market failure may be further amplified by political choices made by interest groups created in the inefficient market. We take an occupational choice framework, where agents are endowed heterogeneously with wealth and talent. In our model, market failure due to...

We study how career incentives affect who selects into public health jobs and, through selection, their performance while in service. We collaborate with the Government of Zambia to experimentally vary the salience of career vs. social benefits of a newly created health worker position when...