This paper investigates the determinants of expert reviews in the book industry. Reviews are determined not only by the quality of the product, but also by the incentives of the media outlet providing the review. For example, a media outlet may have the incentive to provide favorable coverage to...

The Beckerian view that ‘fun’ can be productive has new fertile applications in education, where interactive activities such as videogame tasks (consumption-intensive) are being used alongside standard instructions (workintensive). The implications of this transformation for equity,...

We report results from a field experiment on cultural context in standardized tests among 6th- and 8th-grade school students in Australia. The National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is a series of basic-skills tests given to Australian students. In our experiment, 1135...

In a randomized controlled trial involving hundreds of university students, we provide relative performance feedback specifically designed to reduce low performers' demoralization, by dynamically assigning students to small leaderboard groups that share a similar score in a semester-long online...

Using micro data from eleven European countries, we investigate the impact of being socially active on cognition in older age. Cognitive abilities are measured through scores on numeracy, fluency and recall tests. We address the endogeneity of social activities through panel data and...