In recent years, field experiments have reshaped policy worldwide, but scaling ideas remains a thorny challenge. Perhaps the most important issue facing policymakers today is deciding which ideas to scale. One approach to attenuate this information problem is to augment traditional A/B...

Lab-in-the-field experiments, in which lab experiments are conducted in more naturalistic settings, are increasingly being implemented in developing country contexts. In this chapter, we outline the conceptual and logistical challenges typically associated with lab-in-the-field experiments in...

We study the impact of a merit-based incentive payment system on provider behavior in the primary care setting using new experimental methods that leverage healthcare simulations with patient actors. Our approach allows us to exogenously change a provider's incentives and to directly measure the...

Field experiments conducted with the village, city, state, region, or even country as the unit of randomization are becoming commonplace in the social sciences. While convenient, subsequent data analysis may be complicated by the constraint on the number of clusters in treatment and control....

An influential literature has shown that women are less willing to compete than men, and the gender gap in competition may contribute to explaining gender differences in educational choices and labor market outcomes. This study reports from a large-scale randomized controlled trial of a women...

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...

It is widely accepted that the information technology (IT) industry has high clockspeed. This very phenomenon has led to IT OEMs finding themselves selling new generation models only to be left holding returned merchandise from older generations. Similarly, customers who migrate to newer...

We measure a specific form of other-regarding behavior, costly cooperation with an anonymous other, among 645 subjects at a trucker training program in the Midwestern US. Using subjects' second-mover strategy in a sequential form of the Prisoners' Dilemma, we categorize subjects as: Free Rider,...

The gold standard in the sciences is uncovering causal relationships. A growing literature in economics utilizes field experiments as a methodology to establish causality between variables. Taking lessons from the economics literature, this study provides an “A-to-Z” description of how to...

In this paper we experimentally test the effect of an intervention aimed at encouraging females to enter the labor market in Madagascar. We randomly assigned students in their last year of secondary education to watch a role model or a placebo video. In the role model videos, a female or a male...