In a 1-year randomized controlled trial involving thousands of university students, we provide real-time private feedback on relative performance in a semester-long online assignment. Within this setup, our experimental design cleanly identifies the behavioral response to rank incentives (i.e.,...

In a 1-year randomized controlled trial involving thousands of university students, we provide real-time private feedback on relative performance in a semester-long online assignment. Within this setup, our experimental design cleanly identifies the behavioral response to rank incentives (i.e.,...

National saving rates differ enormously across developed countries. But these differences obscure a common trend, namely a dramatic decline over time. France and Italy, for example, saved over 17 percent of national income in 1970, but less than 7 percent in 2006. Japan saved 30 percent in 1970,...

Using life-history survey data from eleven European countries, we investigate whether childhood conditions, such as socioeconomic status, cognitive abilities and health problems influence portfolio choice and risk attitudes later in life. After controlling for the corresponding conditions in...

As part of a term-long anonymous assessment, thousands of undergraduate university students were divided into groups, each led by a randomly selected peer. The leader's gender had no effect on the assessment's outcomes, but female students led by a female peer achieved 0.26 SDs higher course...

This paper investigates the determinants of expert reviews in the book industry. Reviews are determined not only by the quality of the product, but also by the incentives of the media outlet providing the review. For example, a media outlet may have the incentive to provide favorable coverage to...

The Beckerian view that ‘fun’ can be productive has new fertile applications in education, where interactive activities such as videogame tasks (consumption-intensive) are being used alongside standard instructions (workintensive). The implications of this transformation for equity,...

We report results from a field experiment on cultural context in standardized tests among 6th- and 8th-grade school students in Australia. The National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is a series of basic-skills tests given to Australian students. In our experiment, 1135...