Acts of dishonesty permeate life. Understanding their origins, and what mechanisms help to attenuate such acts is an underexplored area of research. This study takes an economics approach to explore the propensity of individuals to act dishonestly across different economic environments. We begin...

An active area of research within the social sciences concerns the underlying motivation for sharing scarce resources and engaging in other pro-social actions. We develop a theoretical framework that sheds light on the developmental origins of social preferences by providing mechanisms through...

Acts of dishonesty permeate life. Understanding their origins, and what mechanisms help to attenuate such acts is an underexplored area of research. This study takes an economics approach to explore the propensity of individuals to act dishonestly across different economic environments. We begin...

Obesity rates have doubled in the last forty years, and a major cause is the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. In this paper, we identify channels through which information – about health benefits or taste - affects beverage choice. We conduct a field experiment in a school lunchroom...

The literature exploring other regarding behavior sheds important light on interesting social phenomena, yet less attention has been given to how the received results speak to foundational assumptions within economics. Our study synthesizes the empirical evidence, showing that recent work...

We present results from the first study to examine the causal impact of early childhood education on social preferences of children. We compare children who, at 3-4 years old, were randomized into either a full-time preschool, a parenting program with incentives, or to a control group. We...

We combine a field experiment with structural estimation to study skill formation in the adolescent years. By randomizing nearly 1,000 adolescents from low-income communities to distinct interventions that lasted 10-11 weeks, we explore novel aspects of the education production function. First,...

We use a field experiment to investigate the effect of incentives on food purchase decisions at a grocery store. We recruit over 200 participants and track their purchases for a period of 6 months, permitting us a glimpse of more than 3,500 individual shopping trips. We randomize participants to...

An active area of research within economics concerns the underpinnings of why people give to charitable causes. This study takes a new approach to this question by exploring motivations for giving among children aged 3-5. Using data gathered from 122 children, our artefactual field experiment...