This study assesses the factors influencing the movement of people across health plans. We distinguish three types of cost-related transitions: adverse selection, the movement of the less healthy to more generous plans; adverse retention, the tendency for people to stay where they are when they...

Behavioral decision research has profoundly changed our understanding of decision-making. Recent research has begun to explore how behavioral insights can influence behavior in the world, at scale. This work often involves field experiments studying outcomes over short time windows. We study a...

A number of development assistance programs promote community interaction as a means of building social capital. Yet, despite strong theoretical underpinnings, the role of repeat interactions in sustaining cooperation has proven difficult to identify empirically. We provide the first...

Nuclear terrorism is a real and urgent threat. Given the potentially catastrophic consequences, even a small probability of terrorists getting and detonating a nuclear bomb is enough to justify urgent action to reduce the risk. Al-Qaeda and North Caucasus terrorist groups have both made...

Why are some civic associations more effective than others? The authors introduce a multidimensional framework for analyzing the effectiveness of civic associations in terms of public recognition, member engagement, and leader development. Using original surveys of local Sierra Club...

We document the loan provisions in 401(k) savings plans and how participants use 401(k) loans. Although only about 22% of savings plan participants who are allowed to borrow from their 401(k) have such a loan at any given point in time, almost half had used a 401(k) loan over a longer,...

We evaluate the results of a field experiment designed to measure the effect of prompts to form implementation intentions on realized behavioral outcomes. The outcome of interest is influenza vaccination receipt at free on-site clinics offered by a large firm to its employees. All employees...

This paper explores the possibility that governance indicators can be harmonized across three levels (within an individual ministry or government department, across government as a whole, and at the level of global governance) and that doing so will produce effective governance. Specifically, I...

Three randomized experiments found that subtle linguistic cues have the power to increase voting and related behavior. The phrasing of survey items was varied to frame voting either as the enactment of a personal identity (e.g., “being a voterâ€) or as simply a behavior (e.g.,...

We construct the topology of business networks across the population of firms in an emerging economy, Pakistan, and estimate the value that membership in large yet diffuse networks brings in terms of access to bank credit and improving financial viability. We link two firms if they have a common...