Experimental Economics http://lists.repec.org/mailman/listinfo/nep-exp Experimental Economics 2026-06-08 Do People Support Information Campaigns About Inequality? https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12708&r=&r=exp We study beliefs about whether information campaigns can shift public support for redistribution in a survey with more than 3, 000 respondents. We randomly provide respondents with evidence from a meta-study about the share of information interventions that do not significantly affect redistributive preferences. This information strongly changes respondents’ beliefs about the effectiveness of such campaigns. Descriptively, respondents who are more skeptical about the effectiveness of information campaigns are also less supportive of disseminating such information. However, we find no causal effect of experimentally shifting these beliefs on support for government provision of inequality-related information to the public, which is generally high. We analyze open-ended responses to study why experimentally shifting beliefs about the effectiveness of information campaigns does not affect support for information dissemination. Sebastian Blesse Philipp Lergetporer Clara-Marie Pache Helen Zeidler information campaigns, inequality, information dissemination preferences, survey experiment 2026 Large Effects of Small Cues: Priming Selfish Economic Decisions https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tbs:wpaper:2026-01&r=&r=exp We use survey experiments to demonstrate that manipulating participants’ perceptions of the context can affect their decisions. We ran three survey experiments in the U.S. and Israel with participants from both economics and non-economics majors. In the experiments, participants face a tradeoff between profit maximization (market norm) and workers’ welfare (social norm). Our experimental setup enables us to discriminate between the self-selection and indoctrination effects. Existing studies find that economics and noneconomics students make different choices in such situations, which the studies argue is because of differences in personality traits between economics students and others. While such differences might exist, we argue that context also plays an important role. Using priming to manipulate the context, we demonstrate that when participants receive cues signaling that their decision has an economic context, both economics and non-economics students tend to maximize profits. When participants receive cues emphasizing social norms, on the other hand, both economics and non-economics students are less likely to maximize profits. We find that the role of context in determining behavior is at least as large as the baseline differences between economics and non-economics students. Avichai Dudi Dian Haipeng (Allan) Daniel Market Norms, Social Norms, Selection, Indoctrination, Self-Interest, Economic Man, Rational Choice, Fairness, Experimental Economics, Laboratory Experiments, Priming, Economists vs. Non-Economists 2026-03 Experiments on Gender and Competition in the Field: A Review https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:shf:wpaper:2026005&r=&r=exp This review synthesizes evidence from field and lab-in-the-field experiments on gender and competition (including artefactual, framed, and natural field experiments). We first document how the gender gap in willingness to compete varies with cultural, demographic, and task-related factors, highlighting substantial heterogeneity across societies, age groups, and forms of competition. We then review evidence linking competitiveness to educational and labor market outcomes and find that experimental measures of competitiveness are significant predictors of study and career choices and that competitive incentives have causal effects on job entry behavior. Next, we examine a set of interventions, such as information provision, role models, training and mentoring, institutional design, and affirmative action policies that aim to mitigate gender gaps in field settings. Overall, the literature suggests that social and institutional environments can both generate and mitigate gender differences in willingness to compete. We conclude by highlighting avenues for future research. Subhasish M. Chowdhury Noemi Peter Competition; Gender; Field experiment; Occupational sorting; Affirmative action 2026-05 Cues, Attention, and Charitable Giving https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12688&r=&r=exp We identify cue-based beliefs as a source of context dependence in charitable giving. Adapting associative memory models to donations, we predict that cues shift giving by changing which beneficiaries and needs come to mind, even when the cues are uninformative about the donation decision. In online experiments, cues that draw attention to global needs increase giving to an international cause, whereas cues that draw attention to local needs reduce it. Open-ended text responses confirm the attentional mechanism. Applying the framework to fundraising design, we predict that neighborhood-based group appeals–which can raise giving when the charity's mission is local–may backfire when the charity's mission is global. In a natural field experiment with 105, 000 donors to a charity with a global mission, such an appeal reduces pledge take-up by 33%. A complementary online experiment replicates this effect and shows that the appeal shifts attention toward local recipients and away from global ones. Heterogeneity reinforces this interpretation because, in both settings, the group appeal backfires most where baseline behavior suggests that global needs would otherwise have been more likely to come to mind. The results help organize evidence on media-driven shifts in giving, boomerang effects of norm nudges, failures of priming interventions to replicate, and the sensitivity of redistribution preferences to salient recipients. Luca Henkel Christoph Oslislo Frederik Schwerter memory, nudging, salience, fundraising campaigns 2026 Managing Excess Demand for Primary Care: Evidence from Online Experiments https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rdg:emxxdp:em-dp2026-04&r=&r=exp Primary healthcare systems in many developed countries are under strain, partly due to unrestricted patient demand. In response, policymakers have introduced measures to curb unnecessary GP visits, including (i) instituting a small upfront fee for GP visits, (ii) implementing a self-report based triage system, and (iii) providing more information to patients about their condition before they make an appointment with their GP. We evaluate the effectiveness of these approaches using two online experiments with a representative sample of UK adults. The first experiment involves induced monetary incentives in a laboratory-style study while the second is a health-framed vignette study. We find that while all three interventions are effective in the laboratory study, only the intervention that provides patients with more information about their condition reduces low-priority demand in the vignette study. We discuss implications for policy and for the study of health-related decision-making. Diya Abraham Ondrej Krcal Jonathan Stäbler health care systems, common pool dilemma, type uncertainty, online experiment 2026-05-26 An Experimental Comparison of Cap- and Intensity-based Pollution Markets https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qld:uq2004:673&r=&r=exp Markets are an increasingly popular regulatory choice to cost effectively control negative externalities. Traditionally, market designs have employed a cap-and-trade format that places an absolute limit on the quantity of emissions. In contrast, many new schemes—including the world’s largest in China—limit the aggregate emissions intensity of production. This article theoretically and experimentally compares intensity- and capbased markets. We design a novel laboratory experiment, where firms choose both output and allowance exchange. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, we find that employing an intensity-based market rather than an equivalent cap-and-trade scheme significantly increases aggregate output, average allowance prices, aggregate abatement, and decreases industry profits. Overall, both markets perform as expected and close to the cost effective allocation of pollution abatement but with lower levels of aggregate profit as high production costs types produce significantly more output than predicted. Lana Friesen Ian MacKenzie Peiyao Shen auction, intensity-based, cap-and-trade, experiment 2026-05 (De)Motivational Effects of Feeling (Dis)Trusted https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rdg:emxxdp:em-dp2026-03&r=&r=exp We investigate how workers’ motivation is influenced by whether they feel trusted or not by managers. In a laboratory experiment, responsibility for a manager’s earnings is divided unequally between two workers. We vary whether this decision is made by the manager or a random device on the manager’s behalf. Importantly, having more/less responsibility does not affect the workers’ wages. Despite this, we find that workers provide less effort when they are deliberately, vs. randomly, assigned lower responsibility. We find a smaller, less robust positive effect of learning one is more trusted. We examine two inter-related mechanisms and show that both beliefs about expected effort as well as emotions triggered when learning about the manager’s decision help explain our results. Diya Abraham Ondrej Krcal trust, vulnerability, motivation, social comparison 2026-05-25 Public Attitudes towards Mothers' Part-Time Work: a Survey Experiment on Costs of Reduced Working Hours https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iso:educat:0257&r=&r=exp Using an online experiment, we study how awareness of the short- and long-term costs of part-time work shifts public attitudes towards mothers working part-time. By randomly providing information about the short-term (earnings) and long-term (pension) costs of part-time work in a two-treatment arms experiment, we find that individuals change their attitudes towards reduced working hours. Namely, respondents receiving information about the pension costs of part-time work are 22 percentage points more likely to suggest longer working hours for a hypothetical job seeking mother as compared to the control group without such cost information. The treatment effect is stronger for individuals with preferences for and experiences with part-time work (e.g., parents and individuals working part-time), and in regions with more conservative gender norms. Given that mothers' working hours are shaped not only by their own attitudes but by broader societal expectations, our findings suggest that low-cost information provision can meaningfully shift and possibly reduce part-time work for mothers. Maddalena Davoli Uschi Backes-Gellner 2026-05 AI Sycophancy and Decisions https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12681&r=&r=exp We examine whether sycophantic AI advice distorts decisions. Our experiment involves 1, 500 participants in 30 decision environments spanning core domains in economics and the social sciences. Contrary to the vast majority of predictions in an expert survey we conduct, we find that AI advice depolarizes choices on average, moving participants away from their initial leanings. This depolarization arises despite the LLM being measurably sycophantic: it disproportionately offers considerations that support users’ initial leanings and uses agreeable and flattering language. Depolarization occurs across moral and non-moral, objective and subjective, strategic and non-strategic, and complex and simple tasks. Increasing sycophancy weakens depolarization, showing that sycophancy is behaviorally relevant, even if it is generally outweighed by the informativeness of AI advice. Finally, several results mitigate the concern that market forces will generate greater polarizing effects outside the experiment or in the future. On the supply side, our baseline AI’s level of sycophancy is typical of leading models, and these models are not becoming more sycophantic over time. On the demand side, participants do not prefer greater sycophancy, do not select into AI advice in tasks where it is more polarizing, and exhibit greater depolarizing effects when they are more frequent AI users outside the experiment. John Conlon Peter Schwardmann human-AI interaction, economic choice, AI sycophancy, large language models, advice 2026 Individual utilities of life satisfaction reveal inequality aversion unrelated to political alignment https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mub:wpaper:2026-04&r=&r=exp How should well-being be prioritised in society, and what trade-offs are people willing to make between fairness and personal well-being? We investigate these questions using a stated preference experiment with a nationally quasi-representative UK sample (n = 300), in which participants evaluated life satisfaction outcomes for both themselves and others under conditions of uncertainty. Individual-level utility functions were estimated using an Expected Utility Maximisation (EUM) framework and tested for sensitivity to the overweighting of small probabilities, as characterised by Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT). A majority of participants displayed concave (risk-averse) utility curves and showed stronger aversion to inequality in societal life satisfaction outcomes than to personal risk. These preferences were unrelated to political alignment, suggesting a shared normative stance on fairness in well-being that cuts across ideological boundaries. The results challenge use of average life satisfaction as a policy metric and support the development of nonlinear utility-based alternatives that more accurately reflect collective human values. Implications for public policy and well-being measurement are discussed. Crispin Cooper Ana Fredrich Tommaso Reggiani Wouter Poortinga Subjective well-being; Experimental method; Inequality aversion; Expected utility; Prospect theory; Social welfare; Fairness trade-offs 2026-05 Rank-Based Incentives in Team Production: Nonlinear Effects in a Voluntary Contribution https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dpr:wpaper:1313&r=&r=exp We study a voluntary contribution mechanism (VCM) with intragroup competition, in which individuals’ marginal returns depend on their contribution rank within the group. By systematically varying the strength of rank-based incentives, we derive theoretical predictions and test them in a laboratory experiment. We find that intragroup competition significantly increases contributions, but the response is highly nonlinear: contributions increase sharply once incentives become sufficiently strong to support an efficient equilibrium, but further increases in incentive intensity generate only modest additional effects. These findings highlight how incentive design shapes cooperation and provide new insights into the effects of relative performance incentives in public goods environments. Yuki Ono Fumio Ohtake Nobuyuki Hanaki 2026-05 Do People Support Information Campaigns about Inequality? https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aiw:wpaper:49&r=&r=exp We study beliefs about whether information campaigns can shift public support for redistribution in a survey with more than 3, 000 respondents. We randomly provide respondents with evidence from a meta-study about the share of info mation interventions that do not significantly affect redistributive preferences. This information strongly changes respondents’ beliefs about the effectiveness of such campaigns. Descriptively, respondents who are more skeptical about the effectiveness of information campaigns are also less supportive of disseminating such information. However, we find no causal effect of experimentally shifting these beliefs on support for government provision of inequality-related information to the public, which is generally high. We analyze open-ended responses to study why experimentally shifting beliefs about the effectiveness of information campaigns does not affect support for information dissemination. Sebastian Blesse Philipp Lergetporer Clara-Maria Pache Helen Zeidler information campaigns, inequality, information dissemination preferences, survey experiment 2026-04 A Brave New World of Hiring: A Natural Field Experiment on How Asynchronous Interviews and AI Assessment Reshape Recruitment https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mos:moswps:paper_1775627424263_198&r=&r=exp Recent technological advancements are reshaping pathways to employment by automating the interview process. Asynchronous interviews, in which job applicants submit answers to interview questions via an online platform without interacting with an interviewer, are replacing more traditional face-to-face job interviews. At the same time, AI algorithms are now widely used to assess these interview answers. In this paper, we use a field experiment to comprehensively study how these new technologies affect applicants and employersin the recruitment process. Over 3, 000 job applicants are randomized into asynchronous audio or video interviews, live online interviews, and a control group. Their job interviews are then assessed by both professional recruiters and a commercial AI recruitment tool used by most Fortune 100 companies. We find that asynchronous interviews cause an over 50% decrease in application continuation, including among the most qualified applicants, and that this decline is largest for women. A complementary vignette experiment provides evidence that this deterrence is driven by perceptions about the competitiveness and fairness of the recruitment process. In terms of assessments, we find that the AI evaluation tool scores women and underrepresented racial minorities higher than human evaluators, while the opposite is true for men, Whites and Asians. We track our applicants’ subsequent labor market outcomes and find that the AI assessment tool predicts subsequent employment success substantially better than human recruiters, suggesting that AI captures soft skills and potential that humans overlook. In addition, we provide evidence that, unlike AI, human recruiters’ assessments suffer from multiple cognitive biases. Our findings provide some of the first key evidence on how recent technological advances are transforming the hiring process. Mallory Avery Edwin Ip Andreas Leibbrandt Joseph Vecci Technological Change, Artificial Intelligence, Gender, Field Experiment 2026-03-25 Overvaluing Algorithmic Advice: Evidence from a Stock Price Forecasting Experiment https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dpr:wpaper:1268rr&r=&r=exp This study investigates willingness to pay (WTP) for stock forecasting advice from algorithms, financial experts, and peers. In two incentivized forecasting experiments, participants purchased advice using an incentive-compatible mechanism and then decided how much to incorporate it into their forecasts. Participants assigned the highest WTP to algorithmic advice and relied on it as heavily as expert advice, despite its forecasting performance being no better than alternative sources. Consequently, participants overpaid for advice, especially algorithmic advice, whose realized benefits were insufficient to offset its cost. A second experiment shows that overpayment persists even after repeated opportunities to revise WTP with detailed feedback on advice quality and realized net benefits. The results suggest that individuals place excessive value on algorithmic advice perceived as sophisticated or credible, even when its realized economic value is limited. These findings highlight the importance of tools and disclosure policies that help individuals better assess the economic value of algorithmic advice. Nobuyuki Hanaki Bolin Mao Tiffany Tsz Kwan Tse Wenxin Zhou 2024-12 Spatial disparity, information, and the economics of cool transportation: Insights from a randomized controlled trial in Nigeria https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:182475&r=&r=exp Food loss is a significant source of economic inefficiency in value chains. In many developing countries, including Nigeria, a majority of fruits, vegetables, and other perishable foods are lost after harvest, due in large part to inadequate postharvest handling or low adoption of post-harvest management technologies, particularly cooling technologies such as temperature-controlled transportation and cold storage. To examine the economic impacts of cool transportation connecting vegetable-producing states in northeast Nigeria to large demand centers in Nigeria’s southern regions, we introduced a randomized controlled trial. Cool transportation was found to have a large and statistically significant impact: sales price, revenues, and profits increased substantially for the origin-state marketers. A larger portion of sales price increase at the destination market is attributed to refrigeration, that is, quality preservation through cooling. About 66 percent of this increase comes from cooling, with an additional 34 percent from transportation. An information experiment further showed that improved quality information through labelling that identifies the origin of the produce creates price premiums at the destination market. This implies that significant economic gains can be generated not only from narrowing supply–demand gaps in different markets but also, potentially, through mitigating spatial asymmetric information. Yamauchi, Futoshi Balana, Bedru B. Bawa, Dauda Edeh, Hyacinth Shi, Weilun food losses; food waste; food preservation; fruits; vegetables; solar energy; evaporative cooling; cooling; cold storage; randomized controlled trials; Nigeria; Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa; Western Africa 2026-04-14 Learning From False Stories https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:412&r=&r=exp False information often shapes beliefs even after retraction or correction. Using incentivized online experiments, we document a qualitative residue in learning from false information: False quantitative signals generate little to no belief updating, whereas false stories lead to substantial residual belief impact. This effect is robust across a range of design variants. Replacing evaluative stories with more neutral variants eliminates the residue, indicating that the valence of the qualitative information plays a central role. We provide direct evidence that false stories increase mental simulation, measured via self-reports and valence extracted from speech recordings. Respondents are also more confident in beliefs formed after false stories than after false quantitative information, despite being further from the rational benchmark. Additional experiments suggest that the effect also appears among respondents who report not being influenced by the story, consistent with stories partly shaping beliefs below conscious awareness. Robin Musolff Christopher Roth Florian Zimmermann Stories, Learning, Mental Simulation, Fake News 2026-05 Eliciting the Marginal Propensity to Consume in Surveys https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedhwp:103281&r=&r=exp Different methods of eliciting the marginal propensity to consume give very different distributions. Mean MPCs range from below 0.1, indicating life-cycle consumers, to over 0.5, consistent with consumers being hand-to-mouth. We conducted a randomized survey experiment to test if this difference arises because of question wording: we compare using a direct question and a filtered question. Survey wording has large effects on (1) the mean MPC, (2) the extensive margin, and (3) how MPCs vary with payment size, spending horizon, and liquidity. MPCs elicited using a filtered question are much closer to results from using a covariance restriction approach. Thomas F. Crossley Paul Fisher Peter Levell Hamish W. Low MPC; survey experiment 2026-03-12 Social Anxiety and Evaluative Interviews https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:574&r=&r=exp Evaluative social interactions are pervasive in labor markets. Inequality in these settings can arise not only from how individuals are treated or perform when evaluated, but from whether they enter evaluation at all. We study these margins in the context of social anxiety. In a controlled online experiment (N = 922), applicants decide whether to complete a live video interview that determines a monetary hiring bonus. We find that inequities associated with social anxiety are concentrated in participation rather than in performance or treatment. Socially anxious applicants are substantially less willing to interview, hold more pessimistic beliefs about being hired, and correctly anticipate a worse experience. Yet they perform no worse and are evaluated no differently. Interview experience does not attenuate the relative pessimism of socially anxious individuals, a pattern that is inconsistent with Bayesian updating under comparable signals. We use our rich audio-visual data and open-ended reflection texts to show that, instead, socially anxious applicants interpret similar interactions more negatively. We then provide evidence on organizational interventions aimed at closing social anxiety gaps. Finally, we show that social anxiety explains a meaningful share of inequalities commonly attributed to gender and social skill differences and is associated with significant earnings gaps in national data. Samantha Horn Peter Schwardmann Egon Tripodi social anxiety; job interviews; beliefs; mental health; discrimination; learning; 2026-06-01 Did You know That Economics is Not Only About Money? The Effect of Popularisation Talks on High School Students’ Interest in the Discipline https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aoz:wpaper:397&r=&r=exp This paper evaluates the effect of a short, interactive popularisation talk on uppersecondary students’ interest in Economics. This contrasts with previous research, which has primarily examined impersonal interventions to boost interest in Economics. The intervention presents Economics as an empirical social science engaged with real-world social problems. Using a cluster-randomised field experiment conducted during secondary-school campus visits in Spain, we find no statistically significant average effect on stated interest in studying Economics. However, the intervention generates substantial heterogeneity: those with stronger altruistic preferences become significantly more likely to express interest after the talk. These findings suggest that informational outreach may shape who perceives the discipline as aligned with their motivations, even if it does not substantially increase overall interest. More broadly, they indicate that presenting Economics as empirical and socially relevant may broaden the profile of those who consider the field. Laura Padilla-Angulo Diego Jorrat José Ignacio Antón Javier Sierra Economics, diversity, popularisation talks, information 2026-05 On humans and AI: A financial reporting dilemma https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:128775&r=&r=exp This study examines the resolution of ethical dilemmas in financial reporting by human participants and large language models. Participants act in the role of a CFO deciding whether to discontinue a prior policy with biased reporting; however, the bias is known and corrected by investors whereas a change may temporarily mislead investors. We find that models are less amenable to competing ethical considerations than humans, and exhibit greater preference for truthful reporting. Moreover, they respond with greater consistency to institutional ethical guidance, while humans become more indecisive under pressure from management. The models exhibit more internal coherence between their moral judgment and their policy prescriptions and are judged more persuasive by humans. Finally, humans follow model advice when accompanied by an explanation, but they seem to discount (and sometimes react against) advice offered without it. Our findings offer evidence on the misalignment between artificial intelligence and humans in tackling subjective reporting dilemmas while guiding the incorporation of such tools into corporate governance. Bertomeu, Jeremy Cheynel, Edwige Lunawat, Radhika Milone, Mario Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Decision Making, Truth, Lies, Deception, Large Language Models, Financial Reporting, Experimental Accounting 2026-04-18 Designing Persuasive Experiments https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2605.16703&r=&r=exp Incentives in experimental design are often misaligned: experimenters design and finance experiments to seek regulatory approval, while regulators seek to maximize social-welfare. We propose a framework to resolve this conflict, wherein regulators set a minimum expected welfare threshold, and experimenters optimize designs subject to this constraint. It requires no knowledge of experimenters' private preferences or costs and mitigates strategic Bayesian persuasion. Under normal priors, sampling according to the Neyman-allocation is always optimal, independent of the specific objectives. Furthermore, we characterize the optimal stopping-rule. In a numerical study calibrated to historical clinical-trial data, our framework reduces expected sample-sizes by over 48% relative to classical designs that attain the same social-welfare. Karun Adusumilli Abhi Vemulapati 2026-05 Visualizing and diagnosing spillover within randomized controlled trials using diagnostic test assessment methods in Stata https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boc:osug25:4&r=&r=exp This presentation will demonstrate the use of Stata to visualize and diagnose spillover within randomized controlled trials. In the past, techniques such as the L’abbe plot might have been used, but the plots available with diagnostic test assessment methods in Stata (community-contributed commands) are better. Spillover is crucial for the inference from RCT’s but difficult to demonstrate without use of information from outside the RCT. The data (plots and Stata code) are available in Hurley (2024). James Hurley The role of AI use and AI training in school-to-work transitions https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iso:educat:0256&r=&r=exp This paper examines how signaling AI use and systematic AI training in job vacancy postings affect adolescents' application intentions at the school-to-work transition. We implement a randomized survey experiment with 3, 347 users of a large Swiss apprenticeship platform, varying the workplace information in vacancies for three middle-skilled occupations selected to vary systematically in gender composition: IT support (male-dominated), medical assistance (female-dominated), and office administration (gender-balanced). Vacancies mention established work practices (baseline), emphasize AI use, or combine AI use with systematic AI training. Emphasizing AI use reduces application intentions only in IT support and medical assistance. Systematic AI training fully offsets this negative effect in IT support, does so partially in medical assistance, but produces no detectable effect in office administration. The effect of signaling AI use and the compensatory role of AI training thus depend on the occupation's gender composition. Findings indicate that information on AI use and AI training is a firm-level policy lever shaping labor supply at market entry. Roman Theiler Patricia Palffy Uschi Backes-Gellner AI adoption, AI training, adolescents, occupational choice, school-to-work transition, survey experiment 2026-05 Introduction to EBPM (Evidence-Based Policy Making) Episode 3: Overview of Regression Discontinuity Design and Difference-in-Differences (Japanese) https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:rpdpjp:26010&r=&r=exp Regression discontinuity design (RDD) and difference-in-differences (DID) are among the main methods for evaluating the effects of policy interventions employed without conducting experiments. RDD is used when an intervention is implemented only if a certain variable (the running variable) exceeds a specific threshold (cutoff)—for example, vaccination eligibility determined by date of birth, the selection of granted firms for subsidy programs, or health guidance following health checks. By comparing units just above and below the cutoff, RDD enables impact evaluations that operate similarly to randomized controlled trials (RCTs). DID is used when an intervention is introduced at a certain point in time for only a portion of a population (e.g., policies implemented in only some prefectures). It evaluates whether the change in an outcome variable before and after the intervention differs between the treatment group and a control group (those not exposed to the intervention). Yoichi SEKIZAWA 2026-05 Can Evidence-Based Information Shift Preferences Towards Trade Policy? https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:14597&r=&r=exp Amid public skepticism toward trade, we investigate whether evidence-based information - concise statements of research findings - can shape trade policy preferences. In survey experiments conducted on U.S. general population samples from 2018-2022, we consistently uncover a “backfire effect”: information highlighting the benefits of trade, such as job gains in productive sectors or lower prices for consumers, induces protectionist preferences. We interpret this effect as stemming from prior-biased belief updating, whereby the information activates pre-existing concerns about competition for jobs and trade relations with China. These associations are evoked particularly among limited-attention respondents, as well as politically-engaged Republicans. Alfaro, Laura Chen, Maggie Chor, Davin Information;Trade policy preferences;Protectionism 2026-05 Introduction to EBPM (Evidence-Based Policy Making) Episode 5: Thinking About Evidence Through the Example of Health Checkups and Health Guidance (Japanese) https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:rpdpjp:26012&r=&r=exp Several randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been conducted in various countries to evaluate the effects of general health checkups. According to systematic reviews that synthesize these studies, there is no clear evidence that health checkups extend life expectancy or reduce the incidence of serious diseases. However, a recent large-scale RCT suggests the possibility of positive effects. In Japan, the effects of health guidance provided as part of the specific health checkup scheme have been evaluated using regression discontinuity design (RDD). While these interventions appear to have modest effects in reducing body weight and waist circumference, their clinical significance remains debatable. The overall effectiveness of routine health checkups and specific health checkup in Japan is not well understood. It is desirable to incorporate designs that allow the application of RCTs in order to rigorously evaluate their impacts. Yoichi SEKIZAWA 2026-05 The cost of bureaucratic fragmentation: Business tax evasion and revenue mobilization in a low-income country https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:unumer:2026007&r=&r=exp We provide novel evidence on bureaucratic fragmentation and weak tax administrations as central enablers of low revenue mobilization in low-income countries. In collaboration with the municipal and national tax authorities in Kampala, Uganda, we cross-link previously siloed tax records for 155, 000 firms and conduct a large-scale experiment with 60, 000 firms. We document pervasive and selective tax evasion: only 14% of verifiably active firms comply with both government tiers. Cross-record linkage almost triples detectable non-compliance while offering increased enforcement efficiency. This coordination dividend is left untapped. Firms exploit the resulting loopholes through partial informality, re-registering under new identities, and strategic late payments. In a cross-authority field experiment, deterrence nudges, including messages signaling inter-authority coordination, fail to offer a light-touch alternative to addressing fragmentation directly. Our findings establish bureaucratic fragmentation as a distinct and costly source of passive waste in tax administration that existing approaches to revenue mobilization rarely address. Dietrich, Stephan Markhof, Yannick Vincent, Rose Camille Taxation, Tax evasion, Tax administration, Low-income countries, Nudges 2026-05-28 Talking Across the Aisle https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rco:dpaper:575&r=&r=exp We conduct an experiment that engages U.S. Democrats and Republicans in video conversations about policy-relevant facts. We study self-selection into conversations and their effect on information aggregation and affective polarization. Participants prefer co-partisan conversations, believing cross-partisan conversations to be less informative and less pleasant. There is more to learn from counter-partisans, but participants find it harder to extract knowledge from them. Our rich audiovisual data reveal that co- and cross-partisan conversations are strikingly similar in content and tone. Yet, knowledge extraction is impeded by participants' persistent lack of trust in the knowledge of counter-partisans. In contrast, cross-partisan interactions prove more enjoyable than anticipated and significantly reduce affective polarization, an effect that persists in an obfuscated follow-up survey three months later. More emotionally engaged conversations produce larger reductions in affective polarization. Policies encouraging cross-partisan interactions may be more successful at reducing affective polarization than at promoting information aggregation. Luca Braghieri Peter Schwardmann Egon Tripodi cross-partisan interactions; partisan sorting; echo chambers; information diffusion; affective polarization; misperceptions; 2026-06-02 Science on the Move: How Experiential Pedagogy Shapes Human Capital https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12691&r=&r=exp Despite near-universal school enrollment across many developing economies, the provision of quality education that cultivates lifelong learning and the capacity to apply knowledge in novel circumstances remains elusive. We conduct a cluster-randomized controlled trial in 132 public schools in Uttar Pradesh, India, to evaluate a guided, discovery-based science pedagogy at two intensity levels: a high-intensity Mobile Science Lab (MSL) and a lower-intensity Lab on Bike (LoB). MSL improves motivational beliefs and self-confidence by 0.15-0.18 standard deviations, reduces perceived barriers to education by 0.23 standard deviations, raises engagement by 0.17-0.22 standard deviations, and increases standardized test scores by 0.22-0.34 standard deviations across all subjects. LoB produces limited average effects, with gains concentrated among students completing all sessions. These findings demonstrate that pedagogical design and delivery intensity are critical determinants of multidimensional human capital formation, and that discovery-based pedagogy can shift motivational beliefs, engagement, and achievement in low-capacity public school systems. Nitin Kumar Bharti Samreen Malik Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay Nishith Prakash experiential pedagogy, curiosity, student engagement, randomized controlled trial, human capital, India 2026 Not Yet: Humans Outperform LLMs in a Colonel Blotto Tournament https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:abo:neswpt:w0295&r=&r=exp The emergence of large language models (LLMs) has spurred economists to study how humans and LLMs behave in strategic settings. We organized a series of round-robin tournaments in the Colonel Blotto game. This game attracts game theorists’ attention due to high-dimensional action space and the absence of pure strategy Nash equilibria. In the first tournament, more than 200 human participants competed against one another. In the second tournament, several popular LLMs were invited to submit strategies. In the third tournament, we matched the number of LLM strategies to the number submitted by humans. We find that humans more often employ better-calibrated intermediate-level allocation heuristics and outperform the simpler, more stereotyped strategies submitted by LLMs. Strategic sophistication is key to success if and only if the necessary level of reasoning depth is reached, while lower and higher levels of reasoning offer no clear advantage over the primitive strategies. Among humans, field of study weakly predicts success: participants with STEM backgrounds perform better in the first tournament. Surprisingly, humans almost do not adjust their strategies across tournaments with different sets of opponents. This result suggests that humans base their choices primarily on the game’s rules rather than on the identity of their opponents, treating LLMs much like human competitors. Dmitry Dagaev Egor Ivanov Petr Parshakov Alexey Savvateev Gleb Vasiliev Colonel Blotto, electoral college, tournament, k-level reasoning, AI, LLM 2026-05 8 Lecciones Sobre Como Pensamos la Desigualdad en Colombia: Evidencia desde un Analisis Experimental Recorriendo el Pais https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:acp:wpaper:001&r=&r=exp Este reporte presenta los resultados de un analisis experimental realizado en diversas regiones de Colombia para entender las percepciones ciudadanas sobre la desigualdad. Allison Benson-Hernandez Juan Jose Rojas Juan Felipe Ortiz-Riomalo 2026-05 Roles of Parental Risk and Time Preferences in Parental Investment and Aspirations https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pui:dpaper:249&r=&r=exp This paper examines how parents’ risk and time preferences shape their parental investment and aspirations for children’s education and occupations, using a longitudinal survey conducted in rural Thailand. We jointly estimate risk and time preference parameters based on economic theory, using incentivized experiments and incorporating heterogeneous individual background consumption. The first key finding is that parents view parental investment as a risky activity from the early childhood stage onward. Second, parents value later investments more than earlier ones. Third, parents perceive achieving educational success and pursuing a STEM career as risky endeavors for their children. This paper also finds that children with divorced parents tend to receive less parental investment, and their parents expect less from them. Weerachart Kilenthong Sartja Duangchaiyoosook Suparee Boonmanunt Parental investment; Education aspiration; Occupation aspiration; Risk preferences; Time preferences; Incentivized experiment; Early childhood 2026-05 Re-Analysing the Transmission of Gender Attitudes from Teachers to Students: A Computational and Robustness Reproduction https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:i4rdps:299&r=&r=exp This replication study evaluates the computational and robustness reproducibility of the main findings in Mehmood et al. (2025), which investigates the transmission of gender-equitable attitudes from teachers to students in Pakistan by means of a randomized controlled trial with four treatment groups and a control group. Using the authors' replication package, we perform a successful computational reproduction of all reported coefficients and p-values, starting from the provided analysis data set. We then perform four sets of robustness checks: using an alternative way of constructing a key outcome variable, including different sets of control variables, reweighting the student-level regressions, and applying a difference-in-differences approach based on pre-treatment outcomes. Overall, the main findings are highly robust to a wide range of reasonable alternative specifications and analytic choices. In particular, across the 90 robustness specifications we estimate, 94% reproduce the original sign and statistical significance of the reported effects. For some outcomes, we obtain considerably larger effect sizes, further underscoring the importance of the transmission of gender-equitable attitudes. Bachmeier, Marc Haller, Timo Marcus, Jan Rudakov, Victor Simões, Larissa Robustness reproduction, RCT, women's rights 2026 Implicit Centipedes https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:abo:neswpt:w0297&r=&r=exp Sequential games are typically studied in environments where the game tree and payoffs are explicitly specified. In many real-world interactions, however, agents face implicitly formulated dynamic games: while the strategic structure and incentives are well defined, the underlying game form is not directly observed and must be inferred from experience. We study an implicitly formulated version of the centipede game and analyze a natural setting in which professional agents repeatedly engage in a sequential interaction with centipede-like incentives without observing the game tree. Using detailed intra-race data from Formula 1, we show that pit-stop timing decisions between closely competing drivers generate a centipede game once overtaking probabilities are taken into account. We estimate the payoff-relevant components of the game, compute the equilibrium of the resulting interaction, and compare theoretical predictions to observed behavior. We find that drivers respond strategically to each other: pit-stop timing shifts systematically when a nearby rival pits, even after controlling for tire degradation and race conditions. The observed responses broadly follow the equilibrium logic of the model. At the same time, we document substantial heterogeneity across teams: some teams consistently choose pit-stop timings close to the theoretical optimum, while others deviate substantially, and these patterns are associated with di!erences in success rates. By documenting equilibrium behavior in a complex sequential interaction outside the laboratory, the paper provides new evidence on how equilibrium predictions perform in natural dynamic environments. Dmitry Dagaev Daniil Starikov Gleb Vasiliev centipede game, equilibrium behavior, implicit strategic environments, field evidence, Formula 1 2026-05 A Non-Activation Theorem for Platforms https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:128881&r=&r=exp We identify the conditions under which every economic field (including platforms) is behaviorally equivalent to a pure field. The conditions hold if and only if every searcher either has complete information, or has incomplete information with an infinite attention budget (λ j = ∞) and zero opportunity cost (K j = 0) (Non-Activation Theorem). Hamada, Yuhei Platform Economics, Mechanism Design, Search Theory, Information Economics, Matching Theory, Pure Field, Economic Field 2026-04-19 Livelihood alternatives to labor migration: A choice experiment in Tajikistan https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:ifprid:182632&r=&r=exp Labor migration is often driven by a need for income, and can also be motivated by a desire for higher earnings. A naïve assumption is therefore that an increase in local livelihood alternatives might reduce outmigration, something which has been found to hold true in some settings, but not in others. This study employs a discrete choice experiment (DCE) with 408 rural respondents in Tajikistan—a country heavily reliant on remittances from abroad—to assess whether specific local income-generating opportunities, such as those offered through cash-for-work programs or through the provision of additional farmland, might affect stated preferences regarding migration. The study explores trade-offs between local income generating opportunities (wage employment, access to farmland, and irrigation infrastructure) and migration restrictions, i.e., hypothetical constraints on household members migrating abroad for a given duration. We rely on stated rather than revealed preferences to examine these trade-offs. Our findings lend some support to the idea that households are willing to accept outmigration restrictions in return for improved local income-generation opportunities, either through wage employment or own-farming. Yet, findings are heterogeneous and depend on the households’ current and anticipated reliance on labor migration. Lambrecht, Isabel B. Rajiv, Sharanya De Block, Wouter Ergasheva, Tanzila Maertens, Miet Mardonova, Mohru Van Hoyweghen, Kaat migration; livelihoods; land; income transfers; remittances; public works; Tajikistan; Central Asia 2026-04-24 Bound by Tradition: Cultural Gender Norms and Occupational Choice https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2026_005&r=&r=exp This paper investigates whether cultural gender norms about occupations, defined as a society’s perception of what is appropriate work for men and women, contribute to persistent gender-stereotypical occupational choice. Using large-scale international survey data and high-quality administrative records, I study whether second-generation immigrant men (women) are less likely to work in an occupation that is perceived as female (male)-typical work in their country of ancestry. I find robust evidence that men, but not women, adhere to occupation-specific cultural gender norms: men are less likely to work in an occupation that is perceived as female work in their country of ancestry, while there is no such effect for women. To investigate mechanisms behind this result, I design an international survey experiment. The results corroborate the gender asymmetry found in the observational data and reveal a social perception penalty for men in heavily female-dominated occupations, but no comparable consistent penalty for women in male-dominated fields. Taken together, the findings of this paper suggest that persistent social norms are a key factor behind the slow integration of men into female-dominated occupations. Irmert, Natalie occupational choice; social norms; epidemiological approach 2026-05-28 Patient preferences for treatment in relapsed/refractory acute leukemia https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ohe:grafun:002522&r=&r=exp When acute leukemia relapses, treatment decisions can be complex. Patients may face trade-offs between survival benefits, side effects and how treatment is delivered. This study asked people with acute leukemia across five countries what matters most to them when making these choices. David Mott Hannah Hussain Jake Hitch Sulayman Chowdhury Samantha Nier Chris Skedgel Acute leukaemia, Preferences 2025-10-23 Attention Allocation and Belief Distortions https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgif:103344&r=&r=exp Using microdata from the Michigan Survey of Consumers, we study how within-household reallocations of attention across news affect inflation expectation bias, measured relative to a real-time, machine-learning full-information benchmark. Shifting attention toward unfavorable (favorable) economic news increases (decreases) forecast bias substantially, while dropping attention to an unfavorable topic has little effect. The largest bias increases come not from inflation news itself, but from attention to unfavorable social, political, and geopolitical narratives. Aggregate news sentiment has no effect on bias when a household's reported attention allocation is unchanged. In aggregate, these effects are amplified when the attention network is dominated by an unfavorable focal hub: bias-reducing favorable narratives are crowded out of limited attention sets, and respondents closer to the hub exhibit larger bias increases. We find that past and present attention to news together account for up to 70 percent of observed forecast bias, with the current attention component rising sharply during recessions and large negative news events. Results are robust to a battery of specification checks and external validation. Sai Ma inflation expectations; limited attention; forecast bias; sentiment; networks 2026-04-17 Earning while learning: How to run batched bandit experiments https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boc:osug25:1&r=&r=exp This talk provides an introduction to batched bandit experiments. I will discuss how to simulate, interactively run, and analyze batched bandit experiments using the Stata program bbandits. We will discuss results from Monte Carlo simulations and study how to obtain valid statistical inference and correct coverage and discuss a wide range of statistics and illustrations to analyze adaptively collected data. The objective is to learn how to implement you're own batched bandit experiments. Davud Rostam-Afschar