|
on Experimental Economics |
| By: | Cullen, Zöe; Faia, Ester; Guglielminetti, Elisa; Perez-Truglia, Ricardo; Rondinelli, Concetta |
| Abstract: | We present the first large-scale field experiment test of strategic complementarities in firms' technology adoption. Our experiment was embedded in a Bank of Italy survey covering around 3, 000 firms. We elicited firms' beliefs about competitors' adoption of two advanced technologies: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics. We randomly provided half of the sample with accurate information about adoption rates. Most firms substantially underestimated competitors' current adoption, and when provided with information, they updated their expectations about competitors' future adoption. The information increased firms' own intended future adoption of robotics, although we do not observe a significant effect on AI adoption. Our findings provide causal evidence on coordination in innovation and illustrate how information frictions shape technology diffusion. |
| Keywords: | Innovation |
| JEL: | O33 D22 C93 L21 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20894 |
| By: | Little, Andrew T.; Nunnari, Salvatore |
| Abstract: | Debates about when and whether (partisan) directional motives influence information processing are hard to resolve because rational and motivated learning often look similar. We develop an experimental design to distinguish between these possibilities which focuses on the order in which information is presented. A core tenet of Bayesian updating is that order should not impact final beliefs, but if some information changes the motivation to process other information, order effects may emerge. In our first study, we randomize the partisanship of real endorsements for ballot propositions, as well as whether participants learn about these endorsements before observing other information about the propositions. We find no evidence of motivated information processing across several tests. In a second study, we randomize whether participants themselves argue for or against a proposition, and whether they know this position before observing other information. This produces a strong order effect: being randomized to argue for versus against a position affects beliefs more when it is learned before information about the proposition is provided. We also find suggestive evidence that this order effect is driven by selective attention to information. Overall, our results suggest that motivated reasoning about politics is less prevalent than commonly believed, but may arise primarily when people are in an argumentative mindset. |
| Keywords: | Motivated Reasoning; Political Information Processing; Selective Memory |
| JEL: | D83 D91 C90 D72 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20999 |
| By: | Fuchs, Larissa; Heinz, Matthias; Pinger, Pia; Thon, Max |
| Abstract: | We conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with a leading technology firm to study how highlighting flexibility and career advancement in job advertisements causally affects the applicant pool. Highlighting career advancement increases the number of applications from men for entry-level positions and attracts additional applicants with strong qualifications and a good fit, which in turn leads to more interview invitations. By contrast, highlighting flexibility increases applications from both women and men at the entry level but provides limited evidence of attracting higher-quality or better-fit applicants. A complementary survey experiment among STEM students shows how job advertisements shape beliefs about the firm’s job characteristics and work environment. Overall, our results show that the amenities firms choose to highlight can powerfully influence both the size and characteristics of their applicant pool. |
| JEL: | M51 M52 D22 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20916 |
| By: | Giunti, Sara; Guariso, Andrea; Mendola, Mariapia; Solmone, Irene |
| Abstract: | In advanced economies, growing population diversity often fuels hostility toward immigrants and deepens social divides. We study a short educational program for high-school students designed to promote cultural diversity and improve attitudes toward immigration through active learning. Using a randomized controlled trial involving 4, 500 students from 252 classes across 40 schools in northern Italy, we find that the program fostered more positive attitudes and behaviors toward immigrants, particularly in more diverse classrooms. In terms of mechanisms, the intervention reduced students’ misperceptions and shifted perceived classroom norms, but did not affect implicit bias, empathy, or social networks. Our findings indicate that anti-immigration attitudes largely stem from stereotypes and broad societal concerns, and that educational pro- grams combining factual learning with norm-shaping elements, such as critical thinking and structured intergroup engagement, can effectively mitigate them. |
| Keywords: | Immigration attitudes |
| JEL: | F22 J15 J61 D72 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20922 |
| By: | Athey, Susan; Cerosimo, Matias; Karlan, Dean; Koutout, Kristine; Steimer, Henrike |
| Abstract: | We conducted two experiments on PayPal’s Give at Checkout feature to learn about the effect of 1) information about charity outcomes on donations, and 2) exposure to these point-of-sale microgiving requests on subsequent giving. In this “impulsive†giving context, quantifying the charity’s outcome generates positive treatment effects, larger than those for a narrative. Third-party validation can decrease giving when added to the quantified outcome treatment, and has at most small effects relative to no information. The second experiment finds neither crowd-in (e.g., via habit formation) nor crowd-out (e.g., via budgeting) from these microgiving requests on later donation behavior. |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21182 |
| By: | Macours, Karen; Vera Rueda, Julieta; Webb, Duncan |
| Abstract: | Menstrual stigma affects adolescent girls worldwide, yet its impact on human capital development remains largely unexamined. We use a field experiment in 140 schools in Madagascar to evaluate interventions designed to reduce menstrual stigma and promote hygiene behaviors (N=2, 250). Teacher-led sensitization on stigma and hygiene, menstrual products, and sanitation infrastructure together substantially improve girls’ learning outcomes on standardized tests (+0.2 SD). These gains do not operate by improving school attendance or health, the channels typically invoked to justify menstrual hygiene programs. Instead, the improvements appear to arise from psychosocial mechanisms, including reduced menstrual stigma (measured using lab-in-the-field exercises, enumerator observations, and self-reports) and reduced stress (lower heart rate). We also test a novel approach for norm change by identifying “positive deviants†– girls within schools willing to openly challenge menstrual stigma. Selecting and training these positive deviants to serve as peer ambassadors for norm change produces significant additional improvements in self-reported stigma and hygiene behavior. The results demonstrate that addressing gender-specific psychosocial barriers can substantially improve girls’ education outcomes in highly deprived contexts, while highlighting both the promise and limitations of leveraging positive deviance for social norm change. |
| JEL: | I21 I24 J16 O15 C93 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21167 |
| By: | Delfino, Alexia; Garnero, Andrea; Inferrera, Sergio; Leonardi, Marco; Sadun, Raffaella |
| Abstract: | We study barriers preventing jobseekers from pursuing reskilling in high-demand occupations. Using a discrete choice experiment, we quantify the demand for reskilling among Italian jobseekers in two white-collar high-demand occupations—information technology assistant and construction technician—and identify its main determinants. Willingness to pay estimates show that participants are willing to pay to reskill into IT, but would require compensation to reskill into construction. Beliefs about monetary returns and social status help explain differences in reskilling demand, but perceived identity fit in the target occupation emerges as the most important individual-level factor shaping reskilling decisions. A light-touch randomized information intervention providing data on occupational returns significantly increases both stated interest in reskilling and actual engagement in real- world training. |
| Keywords: | Information; Unemployment; Occupational change; Identity; Discrete choice experiment |
| JEL: | I20 J24 J32 J6 D83 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21055 |
| By: | Dykstra, Holly; Exley, Christine; Niederle, Muriel; Wong, Heather |
| Abstract: | Agents insist on agency for many reasons, including a desire to obtain their preferred choice and a desire for control. Agents may also forgo agency because they desire to avoid the costs of considering a decision. In a large experiment, we present decision-makers with a menu of investment options and investigate whether they insist on agency or let someone else choose for them. We find that requiring individuals to consider their choice makes them more willing to forgo agency. This consideration effect arises even among experienced decision-makers and across a range of decision-maker characteristics. While we observe few differences in participants' willingness to forgo agency across demographic groups, people expect many differences to arise, including that women would be more willing to forgo agency than men. |
| Keywords: | Agency; Delegation; Paternalism; Experimental economics |
| JEL: | C91 D01 D03 D81 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21005 |
| By: | Márquez, Karina; Scartascini, Carlos |
| Abstract: | Cognitive biases are pervasive, even among policymakers whose decisions have far-reaching welfare consequences. Yet little is known about whether scalable training can mitigate policymakers biases. This paper provides evidence from a randomized controlled trial embedded in an online behavioral economics course for public officials in Latin America and the Caribbean. Participants were randomly assigned to complete a seven-item diagnostic test either before or after the course, measuring cognitive reflection, applied behavioral knowledge, and policy-approach preference. Those tested afterward scored 0.87 standard deviations higher on average, with especially large gains in applied reasoning and problem solving. These results, robust to within-subject comparisons, suggest that short, structured online training can enhance reasoning relevant to public decision-making. The findings both highlight the potential of large-scale cognitive training to improve public sector performance and motivate further research on its policy impact. |
| Keywords: | Training Evaluation;Policymakers;online education;Field experiment |
| JEL: | D91 C93 H83 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:14634 |
| By: | Charles N. Noussair; Tauhidur Rahman |
| Abstract: | Burnout is a phenomenon that has received significant attention in the past several decades, with meta-analyses emphasizing its adverse consequences for performance. However, a major limitation of the current literature is that it is exclusively correlational. In this study, we conduct a laboratory experiment to acquire the first causal evidence regarding the effect of burnout on performance. We study the performance of students on a standardized test. In the treatment group, burnout is induced with a recall task, while in the control group it is not. The data show that inducing burnout improves performance on the test. At the same time, we do replicate the commonly observed negative correlation between burnout and performance. Together, these results suggest that the observed correlation is driven by the effect of poor performance on feelings of burnout. We conjecture that feelings of burnout are a reaction that serves to partially offset poor performance. |
| Keywords: | Burnout, performance, experiment |
| JEL: | C9 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:exc:wpaper:2026-02 |
| By: | Jiawei Fu; Cyrus Samii; Ye Wang |
| Abstract: | A common experimental research design is one in which individuals are randomly allocated into groups that then interact under different group-level treatment conditions. We develop design-based inference for such "group interaction" experiments, covering scenarios in which groups are either fixed or randomly formed and in which potential outcomes are either fixed relative to others' group assignments or subject to interference. For each scenario, we characterize the causal estimand that the design targets and the inferential strategy appropriate to it. Working in a sparse-sampling asymptotic regime, we show that cluster-robust inference remains consistent and accounts for dependencies from various sources when interference is present, delivering valid inference on marginalized exposure effects. When interference is absent and groups are formed randomly, the design reduces to an individually randomized experiment, and individual-level heteroskedasticity-robust inference suffices for the average treatment effect. Our results on the asymptotic distribution of commonly used estimators rely on a novel coupling strategy that may be useful for design-based inference in other complex experiments. |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2607.02385 |
| By: | Raisa Sherif; A. R. Shariq Mohammed; Matthew H. Goldberg |
| Abstract: | We study how misperceptions of local air quality shape individual behavior and policy preferences in urban India. Using a pre-registered, online survey experiment with 2, 117 respondents across three major cities, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Kolkata, we elicit subjective beliefs about local air quality and randomly provide a subset of participants with accurate Air Quality Index (AQI) data for their city. Participants then allocate real money between themselves and a tree-planting initiative and report support for various environmental policies. We document widespread, systematically biased misperceptions, with individuals in highly polluted cities often underestimating pollution risks. These misperceptions are correlated with lower environmental concern, lower policy support, and weaker climate beliefs. However, providing corrective information does not significantly shift either pro-environmental contributions or stated policy preferences. The only exception occurs among women, who exhibit increased support for environmental policies following treatment. Our findings highlight the limits of informational interventions in contexts of chronic pollution and suggest that misperceptions may reflect deeper patterns of disengagement from environmental issues. |
| Keywords: | Air pollution perceptions, Policy preferences, Public good contributions, Urban environment, Information interventions, India |
| JEL: | Q53 Q58 C93 D83 |
| Date: | 2026–02–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpi:wpaper:tax-mpg-rps-2026-02 |
| By: | Ennio Bilancini; Leonardo Boncinelli; Pablo Marcos-Prieto; Chiara Nardi |
| Abstract: | Using a one-shot Hawk–Dove game, we experimentally investigate the effect of different cognitive modes—intuitive (induced by Time Pressure), deliberative (by Time Delay), and motivated deliberative (by Time Delay combined with a written motivation)—on the propensity to behave hostilely (i.e., to play Hawk). We also examine whether cognitive modes affect responsiveness to payoff incentives by varying the harshness of conflict. Our results show that intuition significantly increases the likelihood of hostile behavior, while motivated deliberation reduces it. The harshness of conflict does not significantly affect behavior, and we find no evidence that its effect differs across cognitive manipulations. However, when restricting attention to subjects in the pooled delay conditions, the effect of harshness becomes statistically significant, indicating that responsiveness to payoff incentives may require deliberation. Consistently, we find that deliberation increases the likelihood that subjects best respond to their own beliefs |
| JEL: | C72 C90 D91 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dis:wpaper:dis2603 |
| By: | Stephen M. Nei (Department of Economics, University of Exeter); Pauline Vorjohann (Department of Economics, University of Exeter) |
| Abstract: | In the presence of communication frictions, individuals must draw inferences about the information they receive from others. Building on a simple theoretical model we experimentally investigate strategic information exchange in the presence of costly and coarse communication. While we find support for the model's prediction that individuals respond to the instrumental value of information, there is significant over-participation in costly information exchange. Moreover, participants fail to account for the strategic behavior of others, in line with the literature on selection neglect and failures of contingent reasoning. Failures occur in both directions, with uninformed agents refusing to use valuable information and well-informed agents blindly "following the crowd". In a subsequent online experiment, we consider potential drivers of the gap between theoretical predictions and experimental results, varying the complexity of the information updating task and introducing a non-social source of additional information. Our results suggest that people fail to use contextual information when interpreting the information they receive from peers, highlighting a way that the "wisdom of the crowd" can fail. |
| Keywords: | information exchange, self-selection, social information, wisdom of the crowd |
| JEL: | D83 D90 |
| Date: | 2026–07–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:exe:wpaper:2609 |
| By: | Bart Cockx; Johan Egebark; Greet Van Hoye; Emilie Videnord; Johan Vikström (-) |
| Abstract: | Reduced motivation over the unemployment spell may contribute to declining job-finding rates. We report findings from a low-cost digital intervention that uses motivational emails to enhance job seekers' search effort. Using a randomized controlled trial that included 200, 720 newly unemployed job seekers in Sweden, we evaluate both supportive messages aimed at encouraging inner motivation, and controlling messages focused on internal and external pressure. The messages increased compliance with mandatory activity reporting, indicating a clear first-stage behavioral response. However, this behavioral change did not translate in more effective job search as both types of emails caused a moderate but significant reduction in search effort and job finding. The supportive messages reduced the number of job applications and showed weakly negative job-finding effects, particularly among men. The controlling messages slightly backfired for job seekers who report strong autonomous motivation at the onset of unemployment. These findings underscore the challenges of motivating job seekers to actively search for jobs and suggest that low-cost digital interventions, in isolation, are inadequate and may even be counterproductive. |
| JEL: | A12 D01 D91 J64 J68 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rug:rugwps:26/1148 |
| By: | Lee, Ines; Lleó-Bono, Ana; Rauh, Christopher; Tipoe, Eileen |
| Abstract: | This paper examines whether increasing individuals’ awareness of their own confidence can influence financial behaviour. In a pre-registered online experiment with nearly 3, 000 U.S. adults, we test the effects of a novel metacognitive intervention: personalised feedback on implicit confidence about one’s financial abilities, as measured by a custom Implicit Association Test (IAT), paired with an explanation of the importance of self-confidence in financial abilities. Treated participants show a significant reduction in “don’t know†responses on financial literacy tests and their performance in an incentivised investment task significantly improves: treated participants are less likely to make clearly dominated choices, more likely to select efficient allocations, and choose portfolios closer to the efficient frontier. These effects persist two weeks later in a follow-up survey with obfuscated framing. Heterogeneity analyses show stronger effects for females and for participants who understate their confidence (i.e. whose reported confidence is lower than what their IAT suggests). Keywords: Confidence, Confidence awareness, Personal finance, Financial literacy, Survey experiment. |
| Keywords: | Confidence; Personal finance; Financial literacy; Survey experiment |
| JEL: | D14 D83 D91 G11 G53 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20771 |
| By: | Rigissa Megalokonomou; Juliana Silva-Goncalves; Roel van Veldhuizen |
| Abstract: | We study the role of self-promotion and career advice in sustaining gender differences in labor market outcomes. We conduct a pre-registered experiment in which “advisers” advise “workers” to attempt either a more or a less ambitious task. We find that women promote themselves less than men and, as a result, are 12 percentage points less likely to be advised to choose the more ambitious task. This gender gap in advice persists across both quantitative and qualitative self-assessments and is robust to variation in advisers’ information sets—including when advisers observe workers’ actual performance—but is eliminated and even reversed when advisers are informed of the gender gap in self-promotion. |
| Keywords: | advice, gender, self-promotion, randomized experiment |
| JEL: | C91 D91 J16 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12809 |
| By: | Ilia Aliaev (Corvinus University of Budapest); Hubert János Kiss (ELTE Centre for Economic and Regional Studies; Corvinus University of Budapest) |
| Abstract: | We test whether a single, neutral sentence reduces present-focused intertemporal choices. In a pre-registered classroom experiment (N=210) at Corvinus University of Budapest, first-year students made eight incentivized choices between a smaller immediate amount and larger amounts in two weeks. The treatment added a one-line, non-directive prompt—“Think carefully about all the possibilities that money would provide you”—intended to shift attention from when money arrives to what it enables. Descriptively and in OLS regressions, treated participants switch to the later–larger option at lower premia (effect size ≈ 0.1–0.2 SD), as hypothesized, but effects are not statistically significant. We interpret this as evidence that the prompt was too weak at the stakes and two-week horizon studied. |
| Keywords: | Experiment; Framing; Nudge; Present bias; Present focus |
| JEL: | C90 D01 D9 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:has:discpr:2512 |
| By: | Angrist, Noam; Kabay, Sarah; Karlan, Dean; Lau, Lincoln; Wong, Kevin |
| Abstract: | Children spend most of their time at home in their early years, yet efforts to promote human capital at home in many low- and middle-income settings remain limited. We conduct a randomized controlled trial to evaluate an intervention which encourages parents and caregivers to foster human capital accumulation among their children between ages 3 and 5, with a focus on math and phonics skills. Children gain 0.52 and 0.51 standard deviations relative to the control group on math and phonics tests, respectively (p |
| Keywords: | Parents |
| JEL: | I2 J21 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21178 |
| By: | Katherine Cuff; Nicolas Marceau; Reyhaneh Nikoonejad; Bradley Ruffle |
| Abstract: | We develop a model of monopolistic competition in the rental housing market for low-income households with endogenous tenancy default. Identical suppliers choose the number of rental units to supply and the rental price to charge to maximize expected profits. Potential tenants who differ in their incomes and face an uninsurable income risk choose whether to engage in a costly search for rental housing. If they search and find a rental unit, then they must commit to a rental agreement before their income uncertainty is resolved. Consequently, some tenants may default on their rental payments. We show that tenancy default can explain persistent excess demand in the low-income rental housing market without any government price regulations, and that such excess demand can lead to nonstandard effects of government regulations. We also test whether the excess-demand equilibrium is behaviorally plausible by designing a laboratory experiment. Our experimental results reveal that, with feedback and repetition, the excess-demand equilibrium that requires landlord participants to restrict supply is no more difficult for participants to reach than a market-clearing equilibrium. |
| Keywords: | tenancy default, excess demand, rental housing policies, market experiment |
| JEL: | R21 R31 R38 D41 C91 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12808 |
| By: | Nynke de Groot (National Healthcare Institute); Bas van der Klaauw (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | Active labor market programs targeted at older unemployed workers are often believed to be ineffective. We exploit a large-scale randomized experiment involving approximately 50, 000 older unemployed workers to evaluate an intensive job search assistance program that focuses on exploiting the social network. Participation in the program increases exits from unemployment insurance by 4.4 percentage points. Program participation reduces cumulative benefit payments by about €715, exceeding the program costs of €470. Participants compensate the reduced benefits receipt with higher earnings. We find that participants change their job search behavior according to the content of the program, and that both the trainer and the training group composition affect the program effectiveness. |
| Keywords: | Randomized experiment, older unemployed workers, ALMP, job search assistance, social network |
| JEL: | C93 J14 J64 |
| Date: | 2026–05–21 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20260018 |
| By: | Chopra, Felix; Haaland, Ingar; Röver, Nicolas; Roth, Christopher |
| Abstract: | We test the effectiveness of different AI-delivered conversation protocols to increase people's motivation for change. In a large-scale experiment with 2, 719 social media users, we randomly assign participants to a control conversation or one of three treatment arms: two Motivational Interviewing protocols promoting self-persuasion (change focus or decisional balance) and a direct persuasion protocol providing unsolicited advice and information. All conversations are led by an AI interviewer, enabling standardized delivery of each protocol at scale. Our results show that all three interventions significantly increase motivation for change and the perceived costs of social media use, with change-focused self-persuasion yielding the largest effects. These effects persist and translate into self-reported reductions in social media use more than two weeks after the intervention. Our findings illustrate how AI-led conversations can serve as a scalable platform both for delivering behavioral interventions and for testing what makes them effective by systematically varying how conversations are conducted. |
| Keywords: | Motivation; Persuasion |
| JEL: | C90 D83 D91 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21049 |
| By: | Alfonsi, Livia; Bauer, Michal; Chytilová, Julie; Miguel, Edward |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates whether economic hardship undermines preferences for honesty. We use controlled, high-stake measures of cheating for private benefit in a large sample of 5, 664 Kenyans, exploiting three complementary sources of variation: experimentally manipulated monetary incentives to cheat, a randomized increase in the salience of one’s own financial situation, and the Covid‑19 income shock (exploiting randomized survey timing, with respondents interviewed before vs. during the crisis). We find that cheating behavior is highly responsive to financial incentives in the experiment. Covid-19 economic hardship—marked by a 51% drop in monthly earnings—leads to a sharp increase in the prevalence of cheating, and the effect increases gradually with prolonged hardship. The effects are largest among the most economically impacted and are amplified when the salience of one’s own financial situation is experimentally increased. The results demonstrate that while most individuals exhibit a strong preference against cheating under normal conditions (in line with the existing body of work), economic forces can account for a substantial share of variation in dishonesty: the estimated cheating rate rises from 29% under low stakes in normal times to 86% under high stakes during the crisis. |
| Keywords: | Honesty; Field experiment; Kenya |
| JEL: | D91 C93 O12 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21052 |
| By: | Cajal-Grossi, Julia; Vandewalle, Lore; Woodruff, Christopher |
| Abstract: | Can improving consumers' ability to discern quality increase demand-side incentives for quality provision? We conduct a framed field experiment in Uganda's furniture market, where quality dispersion is high but the price-quality gradient is flat. Nearly 900 prospective buyers ranked and priced tables spanning the quality distribution; a random subset received information on quality markers. At baseline, individual consumers perform worse than industry insiders at discerning quality. Information provision closes this gap: treated consumers' likelihood of correct rankings increases by 23 percentage points, and their price-quality gradient steepens significantly. Extrapolated market-wide, this would raise markups for top-quality producers by approximately 7.5%. |
| Keywords: | Developing countries |
| JEL: | O12 D83 L15 C93 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21142 |
| By: | Kazuki Sekiya; Suguru Otani; Yuki Komatsu; Yuki Fujii; Shunsuke Ozeki; Shunya Noda |
| Abstract: | How should recommender systems be designed when recommendations shape access to scarce, short-lived opportunities? We study this question in a production setting: Timee, Japan's largest platform for spot work, where workers favorite job templates and receive notifications when firms post shifts from those templates. Maximizing predicted favoriting can generate misdirected concentration: recommendations accumulate on popular templates that create few viable job openings, while templates with unmet labor demand receive too little exposure. We design exposure-control mechanisms for favorite-list management, reallocating template exposure based on posting activity and unfilled capacity. The proposed recommender, thresholded eligibility control (TEC), is fully parallelizable and suitable for large-scale digital platforms. In simulations calibrated to Timee data, TEC raises the per-round job-finding rate from 57.6% to 70.0%. A prefecture-level randomized field experiment increases realized matches and exposure per active template, reduces the share of low-exposure templates, and improves impression-level favoriting and downstream matching. |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2606.17397 |
| By: | Adhvaryu, Achyuta; Gauthier, Jean-François; Jakiela, Pamela; Karlan, Dean |
| Abstract: | How does the expectation of aid change behavior? We propose a simple approach to separate expectations effects from the direct effects of relaxing resource constraints: compare the promise of a program to the program itself. We test this approach in a four-arm randomized controlled trial of cash transfers in Uganda. Both those who received cash and those promised-to-receive cash increase their labor supply and investment. Immediate transfers also increase household expenditures and savings. Our results are not consistent with standard life-cycle models; they are better explained by a model in which the transfer increases individual labor productivity. |
| Keywords: | Uganda |
| JEL: | D15 J22 O12 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21174 |
| By: | Agha A. Akram; Gabriella Fleischman; Reshmaan N. Hussam; Akib Khan |
| Abstract: | How does a person’s own learning experience affect their ability to learn from others? We conduct a field experiment on chlorination in Pakistan, where randomized “learning-arm” households use a tool to track their children’s diarrhea before and after chlorine distribution. Learning-arm households with learning-arm neighbors chlorinate significantly more one year after the withdrawal of the tool, with children’s health improving by 0.08 SD relative to all other households receiving chlorine. Neither learning households without learning-arm neighbors, nor non-learning households with learning-arm neighbors, exhibit sustained behavior change, results which have significant implications for intervention and evaluation design. |
| JEL: | C9 D83 I12 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35410 |
| By: | Blaufus, Kay; Dräger, Lena; Milde, Michael; Schneider, Judith C. |
| Abstract: | The wealth effects of inflation and taxes on long-term savings, such as retirement investments, can be substantial. Nonetheless, individuals misperceive the impact of both taxes and inflation. Based on a unified theoretical framework, we distinguish between potential cognitive mechanisms underlying tax and inflation misperceptions and derive their implications for investment behavior. Using an incentivized, pre-registered online experiment, we test how these misperceptions influence individual investment decisions. In our baseline setting, inflation and taxation affect investment outcomes equivalently in real or after-tax terms. The results show that-even though all participants were informed about the effects of inflation and taxes on investment returns-investment distortions remain significant in both settings. Distortions driven by money illusion clearly exceed those caused by tax illusion. We find that both rational inattention and anchoring contribute to these distortions, with anchoring appearing more persistent in the inflation setting. Money illusion is therefore not only larger than tax illusion but also harder to undo. Money and tax illusion become more pronounced when future tax and inflation rates are uncertain. We then test the effectiveness of different communication strategies in this setting. Additional tabular information, visualizations, and attention nudges do not systematically reduce money or tax illusion. We show that requiring participants to view real or after-tax consequences before decision making is the most effective intervention; voluntary access has weaker effects, and later display does not systematically reduce the distortions |
| Keywords: | Money Illusion, Tax Illusion, Inflation Aversion, Tax Aversion, Visual Salience, Rational Inattention, Nominal Anchoring, Long-term Investments |
| JEL: | E31 G40 G51 H2 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:han:dpaper:dp-750 |
| By: | Kay Blaufus; Lena Dräger; Michael Milde; Judith C. Schneider |
| Abstract: | The wealth effects of inflation and taxes on long-term savings, such as retirement investments, can be substantial. Nonetheless, individuals misperceive the impact of both taxes and inflation. Based on a unified theoretical framework, we distinguish between potential cognitive mechanisms underlying tax and inflation misperceptions and derive their implications for investment behavior. Using an incentivized, pre-registered online experiment, we test how these misperceptions influence individual investment decisions. In our baseline setting, inflation and taxation affect investment outcomes equivalently in real or after-tax terms. The results show that — even though all participants were informed about the effects of inflation and taxes on investment returns — investment distortions remain significant in both settings. Distortions driven by money illusion clearly exceed those caused by tax illusion. We find that both rational inattention and anchoring contribute to these distortions, with anchoring appearing more persistent in the inflation setting. Money illusion is therefore not only larger than tax illusion but also harder to undo. Money and tax illusion become more pronounced when future tax and inflation rates are uncertain. We then test the effectiveness of different communication strategies in this setting. Additional tabular information, visualizations, and attention nudges do not systematically reduce money or tax illusion. We show that requiring participants to view real or after-tax consequences before decision making is the most effective intervention; voluntary access has weaker effects, and later display does not systematically reduce the distortions. |
| Keywords: | money illusion, tax illusion, inflation aversion, tax aversion, visual salience, rational inattention, nominal anchoring, long-term investments |
| JEL: | E31 G40 G51 H2 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12799 |
| By: | Pawel Adrjan; Maria Balgova; Simon Jager; Jonas Jessen; Jason Sockin; Simon Jäger |
| Abstract: | Discrete choice experiments are widely used to estimate workers' willingness to pay (WTP) for job amenities under the assumption that varying an attribute does not change workers' beliefs about other job attributes. We test this assumption by embedding an amenity with a known market price — a popular monthly public transport pass — in a large-scale discrete choice experiment with German workers. Many workers, including public transport users, overvalue the ticket by more than 100%, despite WTP for other attributes aligning with the literature. A complementary belief-elicitation experiment shows that advertising an amenity, such as the pass but also common amenities like work from home, causally shifts beliefs about unlisted attributes of the job. Posted wages similarly signal unlisted attributes so that wage variation, the money metric for WTP calculation, is itself contaminated by belief spillovers — such as higher pay signaling heightened stress. These spillovers imply that discrete choice estimates capture perceived bundles rather than isolated attributes, and distort current estimates of non-wage compensation and monopsony power. |
| Keywords: | amenities, discrete choice, job ads |
| JEL: | J31 J32 J42 C83 C90 D83 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12794 |
| By: | Yilong Xu; Maarten Boksem; Charles N. Noussair; Stefan T. Trautmann; Gijs van de Kuilen; Alan Sanfey |
| Abstract: | In theory, individuals\' higher order risk attitudes of prudence and temperance influence saving and investment decisions. Prudent individuals save more when their future income becomes more uncertain, and temperate individuals prefer less risky investments in the presence of greater background risks. In a controlled experiment, we measure individuals' higher order risk attitudes directly, using two different elicitation methods. Participants then make saving and investment decisions under varying levels of background risk. We find strong effects of background risk on saving and investment. Moreover, individual prudence measures correlate with the strength of precautionary saving, while individual temperance measures do not do so with investment. The risk attitudes acquired with the two elicitation methods are strongly correlated with each other. The representative individual is risk averse and prudent, and neutral towards temperance. |
| Keywords: | high-order risks, precautionary saving, portfolio choice, risky decision-making |
| JEL: | C91 D15 D81 E21 E22 G51 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:exc:wpaper:2025-04 |
| By: | Abebe, Girum; Fafchamps, Marcel; Koelle, Michael; Quinn, Simon |
| Abstract: | Young professionals in developing economies face significant barriers to high-quality professional employment. We evaluate a novel intervention in Ethiopia that places recent graduates into established firms to shadow middle managers. Using random assignment into program participation, we find that the one-month placement significantly increases the probability of wage employment in the short run. Six years later, treated individuals see a 12\% increase in average earnings, driven by a shift among the top decile of the wage distribution. We rule out signalling and social networks as primary drivers, finding instead that the effects are rooted in the accumulation of practical managerial skills and familiarity with professional organisational practices. We run the experiment using a firm-proposing deferred-acceptance algorithm to match professionals with firms. We then develop a generative model of preferences and use this for counterfactual mechanism design. Our results show that the choice of matching algorithm is pivotal: under random matching, the program would likely have yielded no significant short-run impacts. Our results demonstrate that incorporating participant preferences via matching algorithms can improve the design and efficacy of field experiments. |
| JEL: | J24 O15 C93 D47 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21194 |
| By: | Dante Donati; Nandan Rao; Victor Orozco-Olvera; Ana Maria Muñoz Boudet |
| Abstract: | This study evaluates a nationwide malaria prevention campaign delivered through social media in India using a district-level cluster-randomized controlled trial. We combine two survey samples(N = 8, 253) with administrative health records to assess effects on offline malaria-related behaviors and health outcomes. In the survey data, average treatment effects on protective behaviors, care-seeking intentions, and self-reported malaria incidence were small and insignificant. Administrative data similarly showed no detectable effect on overall recorded incidence. Post-hoc heterogeneity analysis, however, suggests that detectable effects were concentrated among households with higher socioeconomic status (SES) and in urban areas: for higher-SES households, bednet use increased during the campaign and self-reported malaria incidence declined afterward. In administrative records, monthly malaria incidence in urban areas fell by 6.2 cases per million people, a 33% decline relative to the pre-treatment rate. By contrast, estimates for lower-SES households and rural areas, which face higher malaria risk, were small and insignificant. In a second individual-level feed experiment (N = 1, 542) that made ad delivery and exposure more comparable across SES groups, the ads increased bednet use and timely treatment-seeking intentions, with no detectable differences by SES. These patterns are consistent with delivery frictions contributing to the campaign's limited average impact, highlighting the importance of better targeting and measurement in social media public-health campaigns. |
| Keywords: | advertising, field experiments, public health, regulation, social media, targeting |
| JEL: | C93 I12 I18 L82 M31 M37 M38 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12767 |
| By: | Bartoš, Vojtěch; Glogowsky, Ulrich; Rincke, Johannes |
| Abstract: | We demonstrate that racial biases against tutors hinder learning. In e-learning experiments, U.S. conservatives are more likely to disregard advice from Black tutors, resulting in reduced performance compared to learners taught by white tutors. We show that the bias is unconscious and, consequently, does not skew tutor selection. In line with our theory, the bias disappears when the stakes are high. In contrast, liberals favor Black tutors without experiencing learning disparities. Methodologically, we contribute by using video post-production techniques to manipulate tutor race without introducing typical confounds. Additionally, we develop a novel two-stage design that simultaneously measures tutor selection, learning, and productivity. |
| Keywords: | Discrimination; Racial bias; Learning; Online experiment |
| JEL: | C90 D83 D91 J71 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20945 |
| By: | Biroli, Pietro; Di Girolamo, Amalia; Sorrenti, Giuseppe; Totarelli, Maddalena |
| Abstract: | Educational disparities often limit students’ access to relatable role models, constraining their aspirations and educational outcomes. We design and implement the Online Role Model Mentoring Program (ORME), a scalable, low-cost intervention connecting middle school students with successful role models from similar backgrounds. Using a randomized controlled trial with over 450 students in Campania, Italy, we find that ORME improves students’ beliefs about the returns to effort, increases alignment between aspirations and expectations, and boosts school effort. Treated students also become more academically ambitious: they are more likely to enroll in academically oriented tracks and perform better on standardized language tests. These findings show that brief online mentoring sessions can have a meaningful impact on students’ attitudes and choices at a critical stage of schooling, highlighting a promising tool to support students in low-opportunity contexts. |
| Keywords: | Role models |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20950 |
| By: | Langlotz, Sarah; Matzat, Johannes; Dreher, Axel; Parsons, Christopher |
| Abstract: | Do factual immigration updates shift societal concerns across political ideologies? Conducting an online experiment in the lead-up to the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, respondents provided local immigrant stock and flow estimates before being randomized to receive realistic information on stocks or flows, framed as constant or rising. Most respondents overestimate stocks and flows, with asymmetries emerging across ideologies. Information treatments lower redistribution and tax concerns by 5.4 percentage points on average. Immigration attitudes remain unchanged. Liberals overestimate stocks most, responding to stock treatments. Conservatives overstate flows more, responding to flow information. This pattern is consistent with motivated reasoning: identity-linked immigration views are resistant to correction, while redistribution concerns are elastic to facts when information targets the migration dimension most salient to each ideology. |
| Keywords: | Information |
| JEL: | J15 F52 F63 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21009 |
| By: | Ricardo Perez-Truglia; Rafael Macedo Rubião |
| Abstract: | People often make important choices in pursuit of higher income, but do they place too much weight on income when deciding what path to take? We propose a simple model of misspecified learning in which individuals overestimate the marginal satisfaction from income—the expected effect of an income increase on overall life satisfaction—and therefore give income too much importance in their decisions. Guided by this model, we designed a pre-registered experiment that elicits beliefs about the marginal satisfaction from income and randomly assigns scientific evidence about it. Respondents substantially overestimate the marginal satisfaction from income both for themselves and for others, but especially for themselves. These biases shrink when respondents are exposed to scientific evidence, and the effects persist one month later. To study whether these beliefs matter for behavior, we measure income-versus-non-income trade-offs using job-choice scenarios tailored to each respondent and a real-world decision the respondent is facing. To elicit the latter, we make a methodological contribution: an AI-led interview method that moves beyond static, predefined survey instruments by combining the flexibility of qualitative interviewing with the discipline of closed-ended survey measurement. We find that biased beliefs are consequential: after learning that income matters less for life satisfaction than they initially thought, respondents place less weight on income in their decisions. |
| JEL: | C93 D91 I31 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35423 |
| By: | Anujit Chakraborty; Arkadev Ghosh; Matt Lowe; Gareth Nellis; Tanika Chakraborty |
| Abstract: | Many group identities that influence economic behavior are imperfectly observed. Individuals and institutions often conceal identity markers to limit discrimination. Yet concealment also creates uncertainty about group membership, hampering coordination in social interaction. To study this tradeoff, we paired high- and low-caste men for collaborative data entry work in North India. We randomly assigned each mixed-caste pair to either be: (i) introduced by full names, making caste common knowledge; (ii) introduced by first names only, making caste disclosure a choice; or (iii) instructed not to disclose caste. The two concealment conditions substantially reduce the accuracy of beliefs about a partner’s caste and confidence in those beliefs. They also weaken workplace relations, lowering trust, willingness to interact, and perceived productivity—consistent with identity helping structure social coordination. Evidence on mechanisms shows that identity concealment inhibits authentic interaction, making workers less able to express their “true selves, ” while certainty about a partner’s identity is associated with stronger workplace ties. Concealment leaves a sizable caste disparity in higher-status role assignment intact, suggesting minimal impacts on discrimination. We conclude that where group identities are socially entrenched, reducing their legibility may undermine intergroup relations. |
| Keywords: | social identity, caste, cooperation |
| JEL: | C93 D83 J71 O12 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12792 |
| By: | Kirgios, Erika; Athey, Susan; Duckworth, Angela; Karlan, Dean; Luca, Michael; Milkman, Katherine; Offer-Westort, Molly |
| Abstract: | Effective information sharing is critical for the success of organizations and governments. Because information that is easy to access is more likely to be adopted, leaders often minimize friction in information delivery. However, one type of friction may increase engagement: piquing curiosity by posing relevant questions prior to sharing information. To test this, we shared identical information about COVID-19 in either question-and-answer format or via direct statements across two preregistered field experiments in Ghana and Michigan (total N=49, 395). Q&A-style communication increased information seeking about directly related topics (e.g., how to wear a mask properly) by 1.0 percentage-point (216%) in Ghana and by 1.1 percentage-points (19%) in Michigan (p’s |
| JEL: | D12 I12 I15 O12 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21176 |
| By: | Stefano Barbieri; Yixuan Shi; Sven A. Simon |
| Abstract: | Communication can facilitate coordination within teams in many competitive settings, from team sports to military operations. However, it may leak and reveal intentions to the opponent. We study how this tension shapes behaviour in a team contest, both theoretically and experimentally. Our theory predicts that secure communication plays a dual role: it improves internal coordination while concealing intentions from the op- ponent, thereby raising competition intensity — operationalized as effort investment — for all parties. Our experiment provides causal evidence for these effects. When communication leaks, its concealment role disappears, and teammates trade off co- ordination against predictability. When coordination concerns dominate, teammates should always communicate, but sometimes they choose not to, leading to costly coordination failures. Nevertheless, investment levels remain close to those under secure communication, well above the levels observed without communication. These results suggest that blocking an opponent’s communication may be more effective than spying on it. |
| Keywords: | Coordination; Team contest; In-team communication; Sign stealing; Espionage |
| JEL: | C72 C92 D74 |
| Date: | 2026–05–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpi:wpaper:tax-mpg-rps-2026-05 |
| By: | Danilov, Anastasia; Hong, Ju Yeong; Schöttner, Anja |
| Abstract: | Unfriendly leadership — hostile or punitive behavior by managers — remains a prevalent yet poorly understood workplace phenomenon. We investigate when and why managers adopt such behavior through a laboratory experiment simulating two labor market conditions: excess labor demand (where managers compete to hire workers) and excess labor supply (where workers compete to be hired). We conceptualize unfriendly leadership as a performance-contingent punishment that imposes discomfort on workers and hypothesize that managers are less inclined to adopt this style when competing to attract workers. Supporting this prediction, we find that managers engage in unfriendly leadership more frequently and intensely under excess labor supply. This effect is particularly pronounced among male managers. Moreover, we show that unfriendly leadership imposes costs on organizations: workers are less likely to accept offers from unfriendly managers and exert lower effort under them. Our findings highlight the role of labor market dynamics in shaping managerial behavior and its consequences for organizational performance. |
| JEL: | L20 M14 M55 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20850 |
| By: | Karlan, Dean; Lambon-Quayefio, Monica; Manjeer, Utsav; Udry, Christopher |
| Abstract: | Digital finance in agriculture is a nascent technology which could help improve rural financial inclusion. In an experimental evaluation of a digital lending product for farmers in Southern Ghana, credit increases farm investments but has few statistically significant average effects on downstream outcomes. However, logistical challenges generated imperfect compliance with the treatment assignment, with some loans delivered in a timely fashion for agricultural investments and others coming later. We cautiously exploit this unplanned non-experimental implementation heterogeneity and conclude that agriculturally-focused digital credit platforms have potential to tackle persistent rural financial market imperfections, but the timing seems critical and deserves further study. |
| Keywords: | Ghana; Trade |
| JEL: | O12 O16 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21177 |
| By: | Yannick L'Horty; Ngoc-Thao Noet |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tep:teppwp:wp26-08 |
| By: | Jonathan Lafky; Robin Ng |
| Abstract: | We examine how product ratings are interpreted in the presence of heterogeneous prefer ences among both raters and consumers. Raters with altruistic motives should rate for the benefit of future consumers, however an ambiguity arises when preferences are heteroge neous. Multiple equilibria exist in which ratings may reflect the preferences of raters or the preferences of future consumers. In an online experiment, we examine how ratings are se lected by raters and interpreted by consumers, and how information about rater preferences or product attributes can influence equilibrium selection. We find that raters tend to rate based on their own preferences and that consumers largely anticipate this behavior. |
| Keywords: | Ratings and Reviews, Altruism |
| JEL: | C91 D64 D83 L86 |
| Date: | 2024–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2024_594v2 |
| By: | Epper, Thomas Frank; Ibsen, Kristoffer; Koch, Alexander K; Nafziger, Julia |
| Abstract: | University dropout is costly, making it a policy priority to identify factors that predict dropout. Using a survey experiment with incoming first-year students linked to long-run administrative outcomes, we assess which information improves dropout prediction beyond standard university records. A small number of targeted, study-specific survey items — especially motivation and expectations about degree completion — substantially improve predictive performance. By contrast, widely used measures of general preferences and traits (such as grit and self-control) add little incremental value — a result that we qualitatively replicate in a large population. Our findings suggest inexpensive, scalable ways to improve dropout predictions. |
| Keywords: | Dropout; Non-cognitive skills; Motivation; Economic preferences; beliefs; Education; Machine learning |
| JEL: | I23 D91 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21263 |
| By: | Baul, Tushi; Karlan, Dean; Toyama, Kentaro; Vasilaky, Kathryn |
| Abstract: | Providing agricultural advice at scale poses operational challenges. Technology may help if repeating content reinforces learning for recipients and thus improves adoption, but risks reducing efficacy given limited customization and human interaction. We tested videos shared with female farmers in India as a supplement to standard human-provided extension services promoting a climate-smart practice, System Rice Intensification. The average treatment effects are large but imprecise because of non-normally distributed outcomes, specifically fat right tails. Weighted quantile regressions show that the imprecision in estimating an average treatment effect comes from farmers with output or yields in the upper quantiles. Both quantile regressions of the 25% and 50% quantiles and a Bayesian hierarchical model (robust to several priors) reveal positive treatment effects, and two subtreatments, one that reinforces information on labor costs from adoption and a second that presents role models to motivate adoption, lead to even higher estimated treatment effects on output. |
| Keywords: | Water; Field experiment; agriculture; Video; system rice intensification; video-based training; group extension |
| JEL: | D13 D83 O12 O13 O33 Q01 Q12 Q25 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21179 |
| By: | Bartscher, Alina; Duernecker, Georg; Goensch, Johannes; Wehrhöfer, Nils |
| Abstract: | We study firms’ financial and real decisions after an exogenous change in their interest rate beliefs induced by a survey experiment with an information treatment. Firms revise their expectations downward after learning about the European Central Bank’s policy rate. Moreover, we find a reduction in interest rate uncertainty. We link the survey to credit register data and find that treated firms both increase their loan amounts and shift their loan structure toward longer-term, fixed-rate credit with lower interest rates. Using balance sheet data, we also show that treated firms invest more following the RCT. These effects are driven by small firms. We rationalize our findings in a stylized model of firms with imperfect information about the interest rate. |
| Keywords: | Survey experiment; Firm expectations; Incomplete information |
| JEL: | D14 D15 G51 E21 J26 J32 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21123 |
| By: | Erik Ansink (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam); Frederic Klapwijk (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | We study whether the number of tiers in a traffic-light eco-label affects consumer welfare. We develop a model in which consumers observe price, quality, and the label tier, but infer a product's environmental quality ("greenness'") imperfectly. In that setting, adding a tier can improve the information content of the label while still lowering welfare near newly created cutoffs. We then use a discrete choice experiment on trash bags with two-tier and three-tier traffic-light labels to test the behavioral ingredients of the model. Estimated treatment effects in the choice experiment show that adding a middle tier makes respondents more likely to choose the highest label tier, increases price sensitivity, and reduces the use of price as a cue for greenness. We interpret these results as evidence that tier count changes both the choice response to the highest label tier and price-based inference. A structural interpretation also yields a positive estimate of the price-proxy parameter, and the three-tier choice data imply a positive but modest separation between the yellow and green tiers under transparent normalizations. |
| Keywords: | Eco-labels, traffic-light labels, consumer inference, environmental disclosure, consumer welfare |
| JEL: | D12 D83 L15 Q58 |
| Date: | 2026–05–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20260019 |
| By: | Ambec, Stefan; Andersson, Henrik; Cezera, Stephane; Kanay, Aysegul; Ouvrard, Benjamin; Panzone, Luca; Simon, Sebastian |
| Abstract: | What can be done to reduce the carbon footprint of consumption? To answer this, we conducted an online shopping experiment that tested the effects of two policy tools: a carbon tax (at two levels) and a behavioral nudge in the form of a traffic light-style label indicating a product's carbon footprint (green for low, orange for medium, and red for high). To disentangle the tax's substitution effect from its income effect, we held consumers' purchasing power constant. We find that the tax alone significantly reduces the carbon footprint per euro spent but not per basket purchased, implying that the reduction is driven purely by the income effect. The label alone makes consumers buy fewer red products and more green products, although without reducing significantly their carbon footprint. We do find some substitution effect and a significant reduction of the carbon footprint per basket only when the tax is high enough and combined with the label. Next, we perform a welfare analysis grounded on a theoretical framework that accommodates for several assumptions about consumer's preferences and motivations. We estimate the loss of consumer's surplus from nudging consumers with the label. We also estimate the consumers' valuation of a ton of CO2 avoided when they care about their climate impact. |
| JEL: | D12 D90 H23 Q58 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20871 |
| By: | Cage, Julia; Guillot, Malka; Huang, Yuchen |
| Abstract: | In many countries, both charitable and political donations benefit from generous – and often similar – tax incentives. While a large literature has studied the tax-price elasticity of charitable giving, little is known about political donations. Using a large-scale survey experiment (N = 12, 600), we investigate the relative efficiency of different tax schemes in fostering political and charitable donations. We document that repealing the existing non-refundable income-tax credit decreases charitable donations but not political donations, pointing toward greater fiscal incentives behind charitable giving. We next show that, conditional on giving, matching – where the government matches individual donations at a fixed rate –increases both political and charitable giving, but that it decreases the probability of giving to charities at the extensive margin. Finally, using a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and generic machine learning, we document important dimensions of heterogeneity, and discuss the policy implications of our findings. |
| JEL: | H24 H31 L38 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21132 |
| By: | Furnas, Alexander; Jia, Ruixue; Roberts, Margaret; Wang, Dashun |
| Abstract: | This study provides evidence that geopolitical considerations systematically shape funding evaluations of international collaboration proposals. We examine this dynamic in the consequential context of U.S.–China collaboration. Across two large-scale randomized experiments with U.S. policymakers and U.S.-based scientists, we find substantial and consistent penalties for proposals involving China-based collaborators. Policymakers express much greater unconditional support for proposals with Germany-based collaborators than for otherwise identical proposals with China-based collaborators (68% vs. 28%). Crucially, this penalty is not confined to policymakers: scientists themselves exhibit a sizeable 18 percentage-point gap (48% vs. 30%), despite professional expectations of merit-based evaluation. Much of the difference reflects a shift from unconditional to conditional approval rather than outright rejection. These penalties are remarkably consistent across scientific fields and respondent characteristics, with little evidence of heterogeneity, indicating that they reflect geopolitical rather than domain-specific concerns. Overall, the findings suggest that geopolitics influences gatekeeping judgments in government funding, with broad implications for peer review, scientific norms, and the future of international collaboration in an era of intensifying geopolitical competition. |
| Keywords: | Science evaluation; Peer review; International collaboration |
| JEL: | F52 H57 O31 H41 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21173 |
| By: | Gennaioli, Nicola; Schwerter, Frederik; Tabellini, Guido |
| Abstract: | In an online experiment with a representative US sample (N=12, 960) we show that increasing the salience of an economic or cultural conflict without providing any news boosts disagreement on a range of political issues by 8-35%. The data support two key predictions of the Bonomi et al. (2021) identity theory of political beliefs. First, polarization amplifies – through stereotypes – latent disagreement among the economic or cultural groups standing in salient conflict. Second, there is belief realignment away from no-longer salient groups, causing some people to move across the conservative-progressive divide. These results can illuminate real-world political conflicts and propaganda. |
| Keywords: | Social identity |
| JEL: | D72 D83 D91 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21324 |
| By: | Marina Agranov (Caltech and NBER); Gabriel Lopez-Moctezuma (Caltech); Philipp Strack (Yale University); Omer Tamuz (Caltech) |
| Abstract: | We compare how well agents aggregate information in two repeated social learning environments. In the first setting agents have access to a public data set. In the second they have access to the same data, and also to the past actions of others. Despite the fact that actions contain no additional payoff-relevant information, and despite potential herd behavior, free riding and information overload issues, observing and imitating the actions of others leads agents to take the optimal action more often in the second setting. We also investigate the effect of group size, as well as a setting in which agents observe private data and others' actions. |
| Date: | 2026–05–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2530 |
| By: | Del Boca, Daniela; Favero, Luca; Pronzato, Chiara |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the effects of “Equilibri†a program designed to support mothers of children under 18 in Italy’s Piedmont region. The program is specifically aimed to help women who have reduced or stopped working due to motherhood to achieve better work-life balance by improving both employment and work-family outcomes. The evaluation, conducted via a randomized control trial, shows positive impacts on employment and work-family balance. Women in the treatment group participated in professional courses, informal meetings, reconciliation support and extracurricular activities for their children. We document how targeted mentoring and reconciliation support increases training, hours worked, and fertility desires among specific subgroups of mothers, while also improving children’s engagement in extracurricular activities. Furthermore, a greater proportion of women in the treatment group expressed a desire to have another child. |
| Keywords: | Family-friendly policies; Fertility desires |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21031 |
| By: | Dirk Bergemann (Yale University); Kevin Breuer; Peter Cramton (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods and University of Maryland); Jack Hirsch (Harvard University); Yero S. Ndiaye (University of Cologne and Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics); Axel Ockenfels (Adenauer School of Government and Department of Economics, University of Cologne; Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics) |
| Abstract: | A soft-floor auction asks bidders to accept an opening price to participate in a second-price auction. If no bidder accepts, lower bids are considered using first-price rules. Soft floors are common despite being irrelevant with standard assumptions. When bidders regret losing, soft-floor auctions are more efficient and profitable than standard optimal auctions. Revenue increases as bidders are inclined to accept the opening price to compete in a regret-free second-price auction. Efficiency improves because a soft floor allows for a lower hard reserve, reducing the frequency of no sale. Theory and experiment confirm these motivations from practice. |
| Date: | 2026–04–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2512 |
| By: | Braccioli, Federica; Daniele, Gianmarco; Martinangeli, Andrea |
| Abstract: | Democratic institutions worldwide are facing rising distrust. We posit that establishing data-driven narratives on long-term social progress and holding institutions accountable for it can restore confidence in institutions. We focus on public safety, a domain in which progress can be quantified by declining violence across industrialized countries. We implement a large-scale online experiment in Italy, a country particularly prone to negative narratives, exposing 7, 000 adults to data-driven narratives on declining homicide rates, justice efficiency, and corruption reduction in the last twenty years. The information significantly increases social and institutional trust, including incentivised donations to a law enforcement–related organization (effects of 6–9% of a standard deviation). These findings persist fifty days later in a follow-up survey. Effects are strongest when social progress is explicitly linked to state action and for individuals holding more negative views. Both positive news and accountability dynamics drive the results. These findings offer a pathway to counter persistent disillusionment in democratic governance, by showing how aligning public perceptions with societal progress can restore institutional trust. |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20902 |
| By: | Felipe Barrera-Osorio; Leonardo Bonilla-Mejía; Matias Busso; Sebastian Galiani; Hyunjae Kang; Juan S. Muñoz-Morales; Juan Pantano |
| Abstract: | Parents may invest differently across children by compensating the disadvantaged child or by reinforcing the child with higher expected returns. We study this question using a conditional cash transfer experiment that uniquely randomized transfers at the student level, generating exogenous variation in transfer exposure across siblings within the same household. The transfers increased short-run attendance among treated students but generated negative spillovers on untreated siblings: untreated siblings of treated students were 3.7 percentage points less likely to graduate from college, a decline of about 30 percent relative to the control mean. We interpret these effects using a dynamic model of household schooling decisions that identifies parental aversion to inequality in children’s educational outcomes. The estimated model implies limited aversion to inequality in children’s educational outcomes and reproduces held-out treatment effects not used in estimation. A decomposition shows that the negative spillover is primarily driven by substitution in educational investments toward the treated child. |
| JEL: | D13 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35375 |
| By: | Armantier, Olivier; Doerr, Sebastian; Frost, Jon; Fuster, Andreas; Shue, Kelly |
| Abstract: | Many digital applications in finance and elsewhere rely on the willingness of users to voluntarily share personal data. Yet some users may be less comfortable sharing data than others, potentially limiting the representativeness of resulting datasets. To document differences in the willingness to share data, we draw on questions to a representative sample of U.S. households added to the New York Fed's Survey of Consumer Expectations. We find that women are less willing than men, and older individuals less willing than the young, to share their financial transaction data in exchange for better offers on financial services. These differences can only partly be explained by variation in related attitudes and concerns. Through a randomized priming experiment using information about the California Consumer Privacy Act, we demonstrate that privacy regulation can increase individuals' willingness to share data, though this effect does not vary significantly by gender or age. |
| Keywords: | CCPA |
| JEL: | C8 D8 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20824 |
| By: | Jack, Kelsey; Jayachandran, Seema; Kala, Namrata; Pande, Rohini |
| Abstract: | Particulate matter significantly reduces life expectancy in India. We use a randomized controlled trial in the Indian state of Punjab to evaluate the effectiveness of conditional cash transfers (also known as payments for ecosystem services, or PES) in reducing crop residue burning, which is a major contributor to the region's poor air quality. Credit constraints and distrust may make farmers less likely to comply with standard PES contracts, which only pay the participant after verification of compliance. We randomize paying a portion of the money upfront and unconditionally. Despite receiving a lower reward for compliance, farmers offered partial upfront payment are 8-11 percentage points more likely to comply than are farmers offered the standard contract. Burning measures derived from satellite imagery indicate that PES with upfront payments significantly reduced burning, while standard PES payments were inframarginal. We also show that PES with an upfront component is a cost-effective way to improve India's air quality. |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21122 |
| By: | Aurélien Baillon (emlyon Business School); Joseph Capuno (University of the Philippines Diliman); Aleli Kraft (University of the Philippines Diliman); Jenny Kudymowa (Rethink Priorities); Owen O'Donnell (Erasmus University Rotterdam) |
| Abstract: | We test whether a conditional cash lottery targets prevention on those doing too little because of inverse-S probability distortion that also causes overvaluation of a lottery. Consistent with theory, Filipinos perceiving their cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in a wide intermediate interval (10%, 85%] are 3 percentage points (60%) less likely to have a check-up before baseline if they exhibit inverse- S distortion. A random lottery offer conditional on going for a check-up (CVD screening) increases the probability by 47 points overall. Estimates of compliance and lottery-induced CVD preventive care are larger (not significantly) for inverse- S (but also S) types perceiving intermediate risk. |
| Keywords: | Prospect Theory, Probability Weighting, Behavioral Incentive, Lottery, Self-selection |
| JEL: | D81 D91 I12 |
| Date: | 2026–03–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20260012 |
| By: | Dykstra, Holly; Fernández-Guerrico, Sofia |
| Abstract: | Income-based rents in public housing create an earnings disincentive. We collaborate with a public housing authority to design a behaviorally informed program that returns part of the rent induced by higher earnings to residents. Importantly, the program automatically enrolled households and was explicitly designed to make the increased payoff to working salient. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we estimate that annual household-head earnings rise 17% ($1, 370/year) and public assistance falls 7.5%, with impacts on both intensive and extensive margins. These results provide evidence that an in-work benefit designed for salience can offset the earnings disincentive and affect follow-through labor market behavior. |
| Keywords: | Labor supply; in-work benefits; Salience; public housing |
| JEL: | D91 I38 J22 R38 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21316 |
| By: | Matthieu Bunel; Elisabeth Tovar; Marie-Noëlle Lefebvre |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how large language models (LLMs) trade off moral norms against economic incentives in discriminatory hiring decisions. Bridging discrimination economics and the literature on the moral alignment in computer science, we submit 18 frontier and local LLMs to the factorial vignette experiment of a published human survey that manipulates the motive of discrimination (customer taste-based versus statistical), the cost of non-discrimination, and explicit moral injunctions. We extend this design with LLM-relevant factors: model and user personas, reasoning instructions, scenario realism, and conversational memory. In line with the literature, we find that LLMs align with humans in the direction of the effects manipulated in the survey; we also find important inter-model heterogeneity. Beyond, we contribute to the literature with, to the best of our knowledge, five novel results: 1) the market-oriented motive (customer-taste) overwhelmingly sways models in favour of discrimination, much more than what happens for human respondents; 2) models are more polarised than humans in response to moral injunctions; 3) classic prompt engineering interventions (user stated motives and model personas) have a weak impact on the models’ “moral compass”; 4) post-training alignement, not scale, shape inter-model heterogeneity, which means that de-biasing is possible but must be explicitly implemented by model providers and 5) memory effects suggest that moral permissivity in the models can be induced by conversational contextual effects. |
| Keywords: | Moral judgment on discrimination ; Artificial intelligence ; LLM audit |
| JEL: | D63 D91 C90 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:drm:wpaper:2026-16 |
| By: | Bill Roungas; Sebastiaan Meijer |
| Abstract: | We present a multi-agent system for studying the allocation of discrete, congested resources among heterogeneous strategic agents, motivated by the problem of railway slot allocation under deregulation. Multiple operator-agents, differing in size and capacity, interact through a shared auction mechanism over repeated rounds under time-constrained decision-making. The mechanism combines a congestion-based base price that increases with aggregate demand with an asymmetric corrective adjustment that penalises the agent requesting the most slots and rewards the agent requesting the fewest, and is designed to mitigate strategic dominance by large agents while preserving transparency and congestion sensitivity. We formulate the interaction as a repeated game with incomplete information and implement the system as a real-time, web-based multi-agent environment in which human participants control individual agents and observe live marginal-cost and competitor feedback. We report exploratory observations from two structured sessions with domain experts acting as operator-agents. The congestion mechanism responds to aggregate demand as designed and the corrective incentives are actively triggered, but agents representing large operators persist with high-request strategies despite the penalty, suggesting that corrective pricing is necessary but not sufficient to neutralise strategic dominance in this multi-agent setting. A post-session debrief indicates that participants' decisions were driven by the assumed agent role rather than personal disposition, and provides qualitative support for strategic motives, such as preserving market presence and raising rivals' costs, operating alongside short-term profit maximisation. We discuss implications for multi-agent mechanism design under asymmetric budgets and outline directions for analytical validation and larger-scale multi-agent experiments. |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2607.01822 |
| By: | Dirk Bergemann (Yale University); Soheil Ghili (Yale University); Xinyang Hu (Yale University); Chuanhao Li (Yale University); Zhuoran Yang (Yale University) |
| Abstract: | Bilateral bargaining under incomplete information provides a controlled testbed for evaluating large language model (LLM) agent capabilities. Bilateral trade demands individual rationality, strategic surplus maximization, and cooperation to realize gains from trade. We develop a structured bargaining environment in which LLMs negotiate via tool calls within an event-driven simulator, separating binding offers from natural-language messages to enable automated evaluation. The environment serves two purposes: as a benchmark for frontier models and as a training environment for open-weight models via reinforcement learning. In benchmark experiments, a round-robin tournament among five frontier models (15, 000 negotiations) reveals that effective strategies implement price discrimination through sequential offers. Aggressive anchoring, calibrated concession, and temporal patience are associated with both the highest surplus share and the highest deal rate. Accommodating strategies that concede quickly disable price discrimination in the buyer role, yielding the lowest surplus capture and deal completion. Strategically competent models scale their behavior proportionally to item value, maintaining consistent performance across price tiers; weaker models perform well only when wide zones of possible agreement compensate for suboptimal strategies. In training experiments, we fine-tune Qwen3 (8B, 14B) via supervised fine-tuning (SFT) followed by Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) against a fixed frontier opponent. The two stages optimize competing objectives: SFT approximately doubles surplus share but reduces deal rates, while RL recovers deal rates but erodes surplus gainsÑa tension traceable to the reward structure. SFT also compresses surplus variation across price tiers, and this compression generalizes to opponents unseen during training, suggesting that behavioral cloning instills proportional strategies rather than memorized price points. |
| Date: | 2026–04–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2514 |
| By: | Cars Hommes (University of Amsterdam); Isabelle Salle (University of Amsterdam); Julien Pinter (University of Alicante) |
| Abstract: | We conduct an experiment with educational content within a large-scale household survey on monetary finance. We identify prior narratives that respondents assign to this concept using open-ended questions analyzed with a large language model. Prior narratives are dominated by inflation concerns and ‘magic money’ views, with little reference to taxation. A central bank (CB) educational blogpost preceded by a short video clip on public finance robustly reduces support for monetary financing and shifts a broad set of related fiscal beliefs, including inflation concerns associated to this policy, support for fiscal discipline, and CB independence. These spillovers do not primarily operate through causal economic reasoning but may be suggestive of a broad application of a ‘fiscal seriousness’ mental model. Our findings indicate that CB communication can tackle even complex topics when it combines educational content with salient narrative framing that connects to existing beliefs. |
| Keywords: | Large-scale household survey, educational information, RCT, narratives |
| JEL: | E70 E62 E58 G53 C83 |
| Date: | 2026–06–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20260031 |
| By: | Daniel Gotsman; Charles N. Noussair; Yiwei Qu |
| Abstract: | Many observers have asserted that there is a correlation between traders' moods and asset market behavior, with Joviality associated with high prices and Fear with low prices. In this paper, we conduct a laboratory experiment to examine the direction of causality in this relationship. The results show that moods, induced by videos, shown in virtual reality, do not influence market prices. However, there is a strong relationship between market activity and subsequent emotional states, suggesting that the correlation between emotional states and market activity is driven by the influence of market activity on emotional states, not the other way around. |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:exc:wpaper:2026-01 |
| By: | Carattini, Stefano; Dvorak, Fabian; Logar, Ivana; Ozdemir-Oluk, Begum |
| Abstract: | Corporate social responsibility and the private provision of (global) public goods are of key interest to economists and policymakers. Over the last few years, many more private companies made their operations carbon neutral. It is an empirical question how consumers value carbon-neutral and low-carbon products, which we address as follows. First, we provide a meta-analysis of the literature. We analyze consumers’ demand for carbon-neutral and low-carbon products, based on an overall sample of 29, 666 participants. The focus is on average willingness to pay for carbon reductions as well as on the characteristics of the underlying literature, which is mainly based on stated preferences and controlled environments. Second, we leverage information on prices and product characteristics from one of the largest online marketplaces, Amazon’s. Using a hedonic approach, we infer from revealed preferences on consumers’ valuation of carbon- neutral products. The staggered process of carbon-neutral certification leads to a series of quasi-natural experiments, which we use for identification purposes. We find that the literature suggests a positive willingness to pay for carbon reductions that exceeds most estimates of the social cost of carbon. However, this finding is not supported by the hedonic analyses, where we do not find evidence that consumers value carbon neutrality. |
| Keywords: | Corporate social responsibility; Pro-social behavior; Stated and revealed preferences; Meta-analysis; Hedonic analysis; Carbon-neutral labels |
| JEL: | D12 D22 H41 Q51 Q54 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20843 |
| By: | Gu, Gyun Cheol |
| Abstract: | We replicate and extend the ultimatum game experiment of Araujo and Uhlig (2026) to five consumer-facing large language models (LLMs)—ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini Flash, and Gemini Pro—across four scenario types (HH, HA, AH, AA), four stake levels ($10 to $10, 000), and ten repetitions per configuration, yielding 6, 832 proposer and 8, 532 responder observations. Four findings emerge. First, all five models propose shares in the 30–47% range, squarely within the human empirical benchmark and absent the extreme behavioral modes documented in earlier research-grade models, suggesting that alignment training has compressed the behavioral distribution toward human norms. Second, every model exhibits twosided sensitivity to human presence: proposed shares rise when the Responder is human (+4 to +25 p.p.) and minimum acceptable thresholds rise when acting on behalf of a human (+11 to +26 p.p.), a pattern that survives even when no human principal is being served and is inconsistent with simple principal–agent alignment. Third, all five models forgo 25–63% of feasible payoff, confirming that consumer LLMs are not payoff-maximizing agents. Fourth, responder thresholds decline significantly with stake size across all models— consistent with rational expected-utility behavior—while proposer stake sensitivity is heterogeneous. We interpret these patterns as evidence of identity internalization: successive rounds of reinforcement learning with human feedback cause models to behave as if they are human rather than merely as if they prefer human-like outcomes. |
| Keywords: | ultimatum game, large language models, human identity, alignment, RLHF, behavioral economics |
| JEL: | C70 C90 |
| Date: | 2026–06–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:129505 |
| By: | Jayachandran, Seema; Voena, Alessandra |
| Abstract: | We examine women's household power in low- and middle-income countries, synthesizing theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence on its measurement, determinants, and consequences. We define women's household power as their influence over household choices, distinguishing it from broader empowerment concepts. We review economic models, including unitary, collective, and bargaining frameworks, and map these to empirical approaches. We then discuss measurement methods such as structural estimation of consumption allocation, survey measures, and laboratory experiments. On the determinants of women's power, we find that some approaches, such as transfers targeted to women, show mixed results, while others, such as increasing women's control over their earnings, show clearer positive impacts. On the effects of women's power, we pay special attention to children's human capital. Few studies provide strong evidence that mothers invest more in children than fathers do, but collectively the evidence suggests such an effect. We conclude by highlighting research and methodological gaps. |
| Keywords: | Marriage; Intra-household inequality; Development |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20938 |
| By: | Joshua Goldstein; Christos Koulovatianos; Jian Li; Carsten Schröder |
| Abstract: | We develop a three-step procedure for ex-ante policy evaluation. It combines (i) a vignette survey that randomizes out-of-sample policies (child allowances and external childcare subsidies) to infer fertility responses; (ii) two applied-theory lifecycle models estimated on external microdata; and (iii) the inserting of the randomized policies into the models’ estimated fertility decision rules to obtain model-based fertility predictions for the vignette respondents, thus cross-validating these predictions with their fertility responses. These steps, applied to the United States and Germany, enable comparable out-of-sample policy evaluation across surveys and models, suggesting how to use vignettes as a compass for model specification. |
| Keywords: | Childcare, fertility, labor supply, vignette, lifecycle models, pronatalist policies |
| JEL: | J13 J18 J38 D91 C83 D10 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp2171 |
| By: | Arnold Michel Koyou; Ousmane Z. Traoré; Maurice Doyon |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the consumer-citizen duality in willingness to pay (WTP) for improved animal welfare in the Canadian dairy sector. The study examines whether individuals express different preferences when acting as consumers in a private market setting versus citizens in a collective decision-making context. Using an experimental survey focused on milk produced under the “Certified Humane” standard, two treatments were compared: a public scenario, where the standard would be mandatory for all dairy producers, and a private scenario, where adoption would be voluntary and reflected through market choices. The findings reveal that individuals in a citizen role exhibit a significantly higher willingness to pay than those in a consumer role. However, this gap cannot be explained by hypothetical bias, strategic bias, or greater price sensitivity among consumers. The study further identifies four behavioral profiles: basic consumers, hedonic consumers, citizens, and consumer-citizens. These profiles substantially influence willingness to pay and help explain the mixed results reported in previous studies on consumer-citizen duality. Cette étude examine la dualité consommateur-citoyen dans l’évaluation du consentement à payer (CAP) pour une amélioration du bien-être animal dans le secteur laitier canadien. L’étude analyse si les individus expriment des préférences différentes lorsqu’ils agissent comme consommateurs dans un contexte de marché privé ou comme citoyens dans un contexte de décision collective. À partir d’une enquête expérimentale portant sur un lait produit selon la norme « Certified Humane », deux traitements ont été comparés : un contexte public (citoyen) où la norme serait imposée à tous les producteurs, et un contexte privé (consommateur) où elle constituerait un choix volontaire du marché. Les résultats indiquent que les individus en posture citoyenne affichent un consentement à payer significativement plus élevé que ceux en posture de consommateur. Toutefois, cet écart ne s’explique ni par les biais hypothétiques ni par une plus grande sensibilité au prix dans le contexte privé. L’étude identifie également quatre profils distincts : consommateur de base, consommateur hédonique, citoyen et consommateur-citoyen. Ces profils influencent fortement les comportements et pourraient expliquer les résultats parfois contradictoires observés dans la littérature concernant l’influence de la dualité consommateur-citoyen sur le CAP. |
| Keywords: | Consumer-citizen duality, Willingness to pay, Animal welfare, Dualité consommateur-citoyen, Consentement à payer, Bien-être animal |
| Date: | 2026–07–13 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cir:cirwor:2026s-12 |
| By: | Cinnirella, Francesco; Della Lena, Sebastiano; Manzoni, Elena; Panebianco, Fabrizio |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how religious ethic influences contributions to public goods. We develop a theoretical model distinguishing individualistic motivations — where people seek to meet individual moral standards — from collectivistic motivations — where behavior is guided by others' expectations. We argue that the Protestant ethic emphasizes individual responsibility, while the Catholic ethic places greater weight on social expectations. The model predicts that the Protestant contribution share increases with income, whereas the Catholic contribution share is non-monotonic. Moreover, Catholics' overall contribution is relatively higher at lower-middle incomes and lower at higher-middle incomes, while there is no denominational difference in the decision whether to contribute at all. The model also implies that only Catholics' contributions are sensitive to the religious composition of their environment. We test these predictions using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, exploiting variation within individuals. Consistent with the theoretical model, we find (i) no denominational differences at the extensive margin; (ii) at the intensive margin, donations increase with income among Protestants and remain flat among Catholics. These results hold when using the denomination of the parents, suggesting intergenerational transmission of religious ethics. Our findings highlight the role of religious moral structures in shaping cooperative behavior and public-good provision. |
| Keywords: | Religion; Individualism; Collectivism |
| JEL: | D91 H41 Z12 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21081 |
| By: | Pascale Bazoche (SMART - Structures et Marché Agricoles, Ressources et Territoires - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro Rennes Angers - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement); Sabine Duvaleix (SMART - Structures et Marché Agricoles, Ressources et Territoires - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro Rennes Angers - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement); Marie Lassalas (GAEL - Laboratoire d'Economie Appliquée de Grenoble - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes - Grenoble INP - Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes, IEPG - Sciences Po Grenoble-UGA - Institut d'études politiques de Grenoble - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes) |
| Abstract: | In France, organic farming adoption has slowed down despite ambitious targets set by the European Green Deal and the French National Strategic Plan. The role that cooperatives, as key stakeholders, can play in encouraging the adoption of environmental practices remains underexplored in the literature. This study examines how they may promote organic farming by adjusting the design of the contracts established with their members. Using a discrete choice experiment with winegrowers from a wine cooperative, we assess farmers' preferences for contract attributes such as environmental requirements, advisory services, partial vineyard contracting, price premiums, and yield-loss compensation mechanisms. We choose the wine sector as it faces a major challenge in reducing pesticide use. Results show that winegrowers are highly responsive to market-based economic incentives such as a 30% premium and compensation options for yield loss. They have heterogeneous preferences regarding the inclusion of environmental requirements within the farming contracts. A latent class analysis identified three groups of winegrowers: a majority are Adverse to change (61%), others are specifically Reluctant to organic (26%), and the smallest group are Ready to adopt organic (13%). While cooperatives' farming contracts can be a potential instrument to increase the uptake of organic farming, additional tools and policies are needed, at least in the shortterm, to scale up its uptake. |
| Keywords: | Choice experiment, Organic farming, Agricultural cooperative, Contracting |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05653061 |
| By: | Abebe, Girum; Fafchamps, Marcel; Koelle, Michael; Quinn, Simon; Schwantje, Tom |
| Abstract: | We introduce a new method for measuring managerial traits of young professionals: using management vignettes in a video studio. This method — analysed through the lens of a Bayesian hierarchical model — allows us to identify four distinct managerial archetypes (which we term 'rule-based', 'affiliative', 'power-based' and 'discretion-based'). We find that past labour market exposure (including exposure induced through a previous field experiment) correlates strongly with the propensity to act as a rule-based manager. We then use the videos to run an incentivised experiment with firm managers, to elicit preferences over young professionals. Strikingly, we find that firms consistently prefer the rule-based managerial style for entry-level managerial positions. Empirically, our results highlight an underexplored mechanism for labour market exclusion among young professionals. Methodologically, we demonstrate the value of controlled vignette scenarios for assessing managerial traits. Our findings underscore the importance of managerial training in shaping labor market outcomes, and offer new avenues for studying the development of managerial talent. |
| JEL: | M12 M51 O15 J24 J62 C11 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21043 |
| By: | Wen, Qianglin; Wu, Xiangkun; Shi, Chengchun; Li, Ting; Tang, Niansheng; Zhang, Yingying; Zhu, Hongtu |
| Abstract: | Experimental design has emerged as a powerful approach for improving the sample efficiency of A/B testing, yet existing designs rely critically on correctly specified models. We study robust sequential experimental design under model mis specification and develop a unified framework that covers both contextual bandit and dynamic settings. Theoretically, we prove that our de sign bounds the worst-case mean squared error of the estimated treatment effect. Empirically, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach using synthetic and real-world datasets from a leading technology company. |
| JEL: | C1 |
| Date: | 2026–04–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138897 |
| By: | Gallo, E.; Heath, R.; Lusthaus, J.; Varese, F. |
| Abstract: | Market design research in economics naturally focusses on how to improve market efficiency. Our objective here is exactly the opposite - how to design interventions that make a market less efficient. Our research is inspired by the growth of illicit markets online where reducing their efficiency may reduce societal harm. Using a web-based experiment, we find that a partial disruption to delivery is an effective method to decrease market efficiency. The decrease is borne by sellers who sell fewer goods and have lower earnings. A consequence of a disruption to delivery, however, is an increase in market concentration because it facilitates the emergence of a dominant seller. In contrast, we find that attacks on seller ratings are ineffective at reducing market efficiency. This study paves the way for evidence-based, causally driven investigations to aid policies to disrupt cybercrime and other illicit markets. |
| Date: | 2026–06–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:2652 |
| By: | Foltyn, Richard; Olsson, Jonna |
| Abstract: | Do large language models (LLMs) provide gender-neutral financial advice? We answer this question by prompting 33 widely used LLMs from five vendors, varying only a single word in otherwise identical prompts: “man†versus “woman.†We find that women are advised to allocate 1.8 percentage points less to equity funds than men; this gap persists across vendors, model generations, and model complexity. Providing richer investor information attenuates but does not entirely eliminate the gender gap. Since even modest allocation differences imply persistent return differentials, algorithmic financial advice can shape wealth accumulation across demographic groups. |
| JEL: | C1 G11 J16 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21323 |