Publications

SSRN

Predictive model development is understudied despite its importance to modern businesses. Although prior discussions highlight advances in methods (along the dimensions of data, computing power, and algorithms) as the primary driver of model quality, the value of... View Details

14 May 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Do Experts Listen to Other Experts? Field Experimental Evidence from Scientific Peer Review

Keywords: by Misha Teplitskiy, Hardeep Ranu, Gary Gray, Michael Menietti, Eva Guinan, and Karim R. Lakhani

July 2021
Article

Do Interactions with Candidates Increase Voter Support and Participation? Experimental Evidence from Italy

By: Enrico Cantoni and Vincent Pons

We test whether politicians can use direct contact to reconnect with citizens, increase turnout, and win votes. During the 2014 Italian municipal elections, we randomly assigned 26,000 voters to receive visits from city council candidates, from canvassers supporting... View Details

Keywords: Campaigns; Candidates; Elections; Experiment; Political Parties; Turnout; Voting Behavior; Voting; Political Elections; Behavior; Interpersonal Communication; Italy

January 2019
Article

The ABCs of Financial Education: Experimental Evidence on Attitudes, Behavior, and Cognitive Biases

By: Fenella Carpena, Shawn A. Cole, Jeremy Shapiro and Bilal Zia

This paper uses a large-scale field experiment in India to study attitudinal, behavioral, and cognitive constraints that can stymie the link between financial education and financial outcomes. The study complements financial education with (1) financial incentives on a... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Education; Attitudes; Behavior; Outcome or Result

Purchase

11 Feb 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Do Interactions with Candidates Increase Voter Support and Participation? Experimental Evidence from Italy

Keywords: by Vincent Pons; Public Administration; Public Relations

21 Apr 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Why Do Firms Use Non-Linear Incentive Schemes? Experimental Evidence on Sorting and Overconfidence

Keywords: by Ian Larkin & Stephen Leider

June 2011
Article

Truth in Giving: Experimental Evidence on the Welfare Effects of Informed Giving to the Poor

By: Christina Fong and Felix Oberholzer-Gee

It is often difficult for donors to predict the value of charitable giving because they know little about the persons who receive their help. This concern is particularly acute when making contributions to organizations that serve heterogeneous populations. While we... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Policy; Information; Knowledge Acquisition; Game Theory; Prejudice and Bias; Poverty; Welfare

04 Nov 2015
Working Paper Summaries

Do People Who Care About Others Cooperate More? Experimental Evidence from Relative Incentive Pay

Keywords: by Dylan Minor, Pablo Hernandez & Dana Sisak

Article

Does the Classic Microfinance Model Discourage Entrepreneurship Among the Poor? Experimental Evidence from India

By: Erica Field, Rohini Pande, John Papp and Natalia Rigol

Do the repayment requirements of the classic microfinance contract inhibit investment in high-return but illiquid business opportunities among the poor? Using a field experiment, we compare the classic contract which requires that repayment begin immediately after loan... View Details

Keywords: Microfinance; Poverty; Development Economics; Contracts

November 2011
Article

Competing Matchmakers: An Experimental Analysis

By: Tanjim Hossain, Dylan B. Minor and John Morgan

Platform competition is ubiquitous, yet platform market structure is little understood. Theory models typically suffer from equilibrium multiplicity—platforms might coexist or the market might tip to either platform. We use laboratory experiments to study the outcomes... View Details

Keywords: Platform Competition; Two-Sided Markets; E-commerce; Competition; Two-Sided Platforms; Monopoly

Purchase

26 Feb 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Different Strokes for Different Folks: Experimental Evidence on Complementarities Between Human Capital and Machine Learning

Keywords: by Prithwiraj Choudhury, Evan Starr, and Rajshree Agarwal; Information Technology

2012
Chapter

The Confederacy of Heterogeneous Software Organizations and Heterogeneous Developers: Field Experimental Evidence on Sorting and Worker Effort

By: Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani

Software development occurs in a patchwork or "confederacy" of different types of institutions (universities, small start-ups, multinational enterprises, government agencies, etc.) utilizing varied work approaches. Here we speculate on one possible explanation for this... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Applications and Software; Product Development; Organizations; Employees; Behavior; Competition; Cooperation; Creativity; Information Technology Industry

2014
Working Paper

Saving More to Borrow Less: Experimental Evidence from Access to Formal Savings Accounts in Chile

By: Felipe Kast and Dina Pomeranz

Poverty is often characterized not only by low and unstable income, but also by heavy debt burdens. We find that reducing barriers to saving through access to free savings accounts decreases participants' short-term debt by about 20%. In addition, participants who... View Details

Keywords: Saving; Poverty; Borrowing and Debt; Chile

SSRN

2010
Comment

Does Arrest Deter Violence? Comparing Experimental and Nonexperimental Evidence on Mandatory Arrest Laws, by Radha Iyengar

By: Rafael Di Tella

Keywords: Law Enforcement; Laws and Statutes; Social Issues

16 Apr 2019
Working Paper Summaries

Can Biometric Tracking Improve Healthcare Provision and Data Quality? Experimental Evidence from Tuberculosis Control in India

Keywords: by Thomas Bossuroy, Clara Delavallade, and Vincent Pons; Health; Medical Devices & Supplies

April 2015
Article

Incentivizing Calculated Risk-Taking: Evidence from an Experiment with Commercial Bank Loan Officers

By: Shawn Cole, Martin Kanz and Leora Klapper

This paper uses a series of experiments with commercial bank loan officers to test the effect of performance incentives on risk assessment and lending decisions. We first show that while high-powered incentives lead to greater screening effort and more profitable... View Details

Keywords: Banking; Management Processes; Credit Products; Experimental Economics; Risk Management; Motivation and Incentives; Management Practices and Processes; Financing and Loans; Banking Industry

2023
Working Paper

Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality

By: Fabrizio Dell'Acqua, Edward McFowland III, Ethan Mollick, Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, Katherine C. Kellogg, Saran Rajendran, Lisa Krayer, François Candelon and Karim R. Lakhani

The public release of Large Language Models (LLMs) has sparked tremendous interest in how humans will use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accomplish a variety of tasks. In our study conducted with Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm, we examine... View Details

Keywords: Large Language Model; AI and Machine Learning; Performance Efficiency; Performance Improvement

SSRN

2016
Working Paper

Experimental Evidence on Policies Aimed at Closing the Gender Gap in Willingness to Guess on Multiple-Choice Tests

By: Katherine Baldiga Coffman

Research has shown that women skip more questions than men on multiple-choice tests with penalties for wrong answers. We propose and test five policy changes aimed at eliminating this source of gender bias in test scores. Our data show that simply removing the penalty... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Behavior; Decision Choices and Conditions; Gender

2021
Working Paper

The Luck of the Draw: The Causal Effect of Physicians on Birth Outcomes

By: Arlen Guarin, Christian Posso, Estefania Saravia and Jorge Tamayo

Identifying the effect of physicians’ skills on health outcomes is a challenging task due to the nonrandom sorting between physicians and hospitals. We overcome this challenge by exploiting a Colombian government program that randomly assigned 2,126 physicians to 618... View Details

Keywords: Physicians' Health Skills; Health Birth Outcomes; Birthing Outcomes; Experimental Evidence; Health Care and Treatment; Competency and Skills; Outcome or Result; Health Industry; Colombia