Many social experiments are run in multiple waves, or are replications of earlier social experiments. In principle, the sampling design can be modified in later stages or replications to allow for more efficient estimation of causal effects. We consider the design of a two-stage experiment for...

The importance of using natural experiments and experimental data in economic research has long been recognized. Yet, it is only in recent years that these approaches have become an integral part of the economist's analytical toolbox, thanks to the efforts of Meyer, Card, Peters, Krueger,...

We investigate the effects of team competition on pro-social lending activity on Kiva.org, the first microlending website to match lenders with entrepreneurs in developing countries. Using naturally occurring field data, we find that lenders who join teams contribute 1.2 more loans ($30–$42)...

Default options have been shown to affect behaviour in a variety of economic choice tasks, including health care and retirement savings. Less research has tested whether defaults affect behaviour in the domain of energy efficiency. This study uses data from a randomized controlled experiment in...

Textbooks on Design of Experiments invariably start by explaining why one-factor-at-a-time (OAT) is an inferior method. Here we will show that in a model with all interactions a variant of OAT is extremely efficient, provided that we only have non-negative parameters and that there are only a...

We develop in this paper a novel portfolio selection framework with a feature of dual robustness in both return distribution modeling and portfolio optimization. While predicting the return distributions of the future market always represents the most compelling challenge in investment, any...

We propose a new adaptive procedure for the measurement of decision models. Our procedure bounds the function of the decision model, sequentially halves the maximal distance between its bounds, and incrementally restricts the feasible space of associated parameters. It relies on approximating...

Design Of Experiments (DOE) is needed for experiments with real-life systems, and with either deterministic or random simulation models. This contribution discusses the different types of DOE for these three domains, but focusses on random simulation. DOE may have two goals: sensitivity analysis...

This paper presents the first analysis of the life course outcomes through late midlife (around age 55) for the participants of the iconic Perry Preschool Project, an experimental high-quality preschool program for disadvantaged African-American children in the 1960s. We discuss the design of...

A growing literature relies on natural experiments to establish causal effects in macroeconomics. In diverse applications, natural experiments have been used to verify underlying assumptions of conventional models, quantify specific model parameters, and identify mechanisms that have major...