Informal lending and savings institutions exist around the world, and often include regular door-to-door deposit collection of cash. Some banks have adopted similar services in order to expand access to banking services in areas that lack physical branches. Using a randomized control trial, we...

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...

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...

This paper presents the results of an experiment testing the roles of a savings pre-commitment and different savings-focused choice architectures on the savings deposit decisions of 845,786 low- and moderate-income (LMI) tax filers. Results suggest that pre-committing to save at the start of the...

One of the risks to financial security among older homeowners is the failure to pay property taxes. Tax bills are often due in lump sums, and if the homeowner has a failure of prospective memory, they may neglect to make a payment. This field study tests if reminders to plan ahead and to pay...

The value of time determines relative prices of goods and services, investments, productivity, economic growth, and measurements of income inequality. Economists in the 1960s began to focus on the value of non-work time, pioneering a deep literature exploring the optimal allocation and value of...

Universal health coverage is a widely shared goal across lower-income countries. We conducted a large-scale, 4-year trial that randomized premiums and subsidies for India's first national, public hospital insurance program, called RSBY. We find substantial demand (~ 60% uptake) even when...

We conduct field experiments in a large real-world social network to examine why decision-makers treat their friends more generously than strangers. Subjects are asked to divide a surplus between themselves and named partners at varying social distances, but only one of these decisions is...

We conduct a field experiment on direct and indirect transfer mechanisms. It shows that people are willing to donate significantly more if the donation is indirect, i.e., it is tied to the purchase of a good with a price premium, rather than made directly. This points to an...

The sinking of the Titanic in April 1912 took the lives of 68 percent of the people aboard. Who survived? It was women and children who had a higher probability of being saved, not men. Likewise, people traveling in first class had a better chance of survival than those in second and third...