We test the main predictions of the rational addiction model, reconceptualized as rational habit formation, in the context of handwashing. To track habit formation, we design soap dispensers with timed sensors. We test for rational habit formation by informing some households about a future...

Economic agents face many different types of economic incentives when making financial and moral decisions. We provide experimental data from a population that uniquely responds to incentives to lie compared to previously studied populations. We conduct a standard 6-sided die rolling lying study...

We experimentally varied information mailed to 87,000 households in California's health insurance marketplace to study the role of frictions in insurance take-up. Reminders about the enrollment deadline raised enrollment by 1.3 pp (16 percent), in this typically low take-up population....

A large literature treats take-up of commitment contracts, in the form of choice-set restrictions or penalties, as a smoking gun for time-inconsistency or self-control problems (for short, "present focus"). This paper develops techniques for inspecting this assumption, presents new...

A large and growing literature shows that attention-increasing interventions, such as reminders and planning prompts, can promote important behaviors. This paper develops a method to investigate whether people value attention-increasing tools rationally. We characterize how the demand for...

Empirically observed intertemporal choices about money have long been thought to exhibit present bias, i.e. higher short-term compared to long-term discount rates. Recently, this view has been called into question on both empirical and theoretical grounds, and a spate of recent findings suggest...