Publications

Purchase

2023
Working Paper

Life After Death: A Field Experiment with Small Businesses on Information Frictions, Stigma, and Bankruptcy

By: Shai Benjamin Bernstein, Emanuele Colonnelli, Mitchell Hoffman and Benjamin Iverson

In a randomized control trial (RCT) with U.S. small businesses, we document that a large share of firms are not well-informed about bankruptcy. Many assume that bankruptcy necessarily entails the death of a business and do not know about Chapter 11 bankruptcy, where... View Details

Keywords: Small Business; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Knowledge Dissemination; Outcome or Result

2024
Working Paper

Do Information Frictions and Corruption Perceptions Kill Competition? A Field Experiment on Public Procurement in Uganda

By: Emanuele Colonnelli, Francesco Loiacono, Edwin Muhumuza and Edoardo Teso

We study whether information frictions and corruption perceptions deter firms from doing business with the government. We conduct two nationwide randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in collaboration with the national public procurement supervisory and anti-corruption... View Details

Keywords: Knowledge Use and Leverage; Government and Politics; Crime and Corruption; Trust; Perception; Business and Government Relations

01 Dec 2016
News

@Soldiers Field

(photo by Neal Hamberg) (photo by Neal Hamberg) Blue skies and sunshine welcomed over 2,000 alumni and guests to fall reunions, where the many offerings included a case discussion of “Wynton Marsalis & Jazz at Lincoln Center” with Professor Rohit Deshpandé, a tour of... View Details

2016
Working Paper

The Effect of Financial Performance Measurement on Customer Satisfaction: A Field Experiment in China

By: Daniel A. Brown

2017
Other Unpublished Work

Show or Tell?: Behavioral Inventory Response to an East African Mobile Money Field Experiment

By: Jason Acimovic, Chris Parker, David F. Drake and Karthik Balasubramanian

January 2024
Article

Population Interference in Panel Experiments

By: Kevin Wu Han, Guillaume Basse and Iavor Bojinov

The phenomenon of population interference, where a treatment assigned to one experimental unit affects another experimental unit’s outcome, has received considerable attention in standard randomized experiments. The complications produced by population interference in... View Details

Keywords: Outcome or Result; Research; Situation or Environment

Register to Read

01 Dec 2015
Blog Post

What is the HBS FIELD Program?

Back in 2011, HBS added the FIELD program as a required part of the first year curriculum. Dedicated to putting learning into action, it continues to expand and evolve each year. To learn more about FIELD we... View Details

27 Mar 2014
Video

How Do People Experience You

Population Interference in Panel Experiments

The phenomenon of population interference, where a treatment assigned to one experimental unit affects another experimental unit’s outcome, has received considerable attention in standard randomized experiments. The complications produced by population... View Details

2021
Working Paper

Population Interference in Panel Experiments

By: Iavor I Bojinov, Kevin Wu Han and Guillaume Basse

The phenomenon of population interference, where a treatment assigned to one experimental unit affects another experimental unit's outcome, has received considerable attention in standard randomized experiments. The complications produced by population interference in... View Details

Keywords: Finite Population; Potential Outcomes; Dynamic Causal Effects; Mathematical Methods

SSRN

Article

Repairing the Damage: The Effect of Price Knowledge and Gender on Auto-Repair Price Quotes

By: Meghan Busse, Ayelet Israeli and Florian Zettelmeyer

In this paper we investigate whether sellers treat consumers differently on the basis of how well informed consumers appear to be. We implement a large-scale field experiment in which callers request price quotes from automotive repair shops. We show that sellers alter... View Details

Keywords: Pricing; Price Discrimination; Automobiles; Field Experiment; Information; Fairness; Price; Knowledge Use and Leverage; Internet and the Web; Gender; Service Industry; Auto Industry

Purchase

We test the effectiveness of self-help peer groups as a commitment device for precautionary savings, through two randomized field experiments among 2,687 microentrepreneurs in Chile. The first experiment finds that self-help peer groups are a powerful tool to... View Details

November 2009
Article

Finding Missing Markets (and a Disturbing Epilogue): Evidence from an Export Crop Adoption and Marketing Intervention in Kenya

By: Nava Ashraf, Xavier Gine and Dean Karlan

Farmers may grow crops for local consumption despite more profitable export options. DrumNet, a Kenyan NGO that helps small farmers adopt and market export crops, conducted a randomized trial to evaluate its impact. DrumNet services increased production of export crops... View Details

Keywords: Export Crop; Field Experiment; Food Safety Standards; Plant-Based Agribusiness; Trade; Profit; Marketing; Standards; Failure; Non-Governmental Organizations; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Kenya; European Union

17 Feb 2011
News

Field Report: Rwanda

Dr. Nyagahene, wife of Eugene Nyagahene. Photos courtesy Colin Barry. Last month, some 500 students fanned out around the globe to participate in 13 IXPs offered during January break. First-year student Colin Barry was in Rwanda, where part of his time was devoted to a... View Details

Keywords: Julia Hanna; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services; Religious, Grantmaking, Civic, Professional, and Similar Organizations; Personal Services

20 Jun 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Show or Tell? Improving Agent Decision Making in a Tanzanian Mobile Money Field Experiment

Keywords: by Jason Acimovic, Chris Parker, David F. Drake, and Karthik Balasubramanian; Banking; Financial Services

Article

A Megastudy of Text-Based Nudges Encouraging Patients to Get Vaccinated at an Upcoming Doctor's Appointment

By: Katherine L. Milkman, Mitesh S. Patel, Linnea Gandhi, Heather N. Graci, Dena M. Gromet, Hung Ho, Joseph S. Kay, Timothy W. Lee, Modupe Akinola, John Beshears, Jonathan E. Bogard, Alison Buttenheim, Christopher F. Chabris, Gretchen B. Chapman, James J. Choi, Hengchen Dai, Craig R. Fox, Amir Goren, Matthew D. Hilchey, Jillian Hmurovic, Leslie K. John, Dean Karlan, Melanie Kim, David Laibson, Cait Lamberton, Brigitte C. Madrian, Michelle N. Meyer, Maria Modanu, Jimin Nam, Todd Rogers, Renante Rondina, Silvia Saccardo, Maheen Shermohammed, Dilip Soman, Jehan Sparks, Caleb Warren, Megan Weber, Ron Berman, Chalanda N. Evans, Christopher K. Snider, Eli Tsukayama, Christophe Van den Bulte, Kevin G. Volpp and Angela L. Duckworth

Many Americans fail to get life-saving vaccines each year, and the availability of a vaccine for COVID-19 makes the challenge of encouraging vaccination more urgent than ever. We present a large field experiment (N = 47,306) testing 19 nudges delivered to patients via... View Details

Keywords: Vaccination; COVID-19; Nudge; Influenza; Field Experiment; Health; Communication Strategy; Behavior

29 Oct 2015
News

How to Design (and Analyze) a Business Experiment

March 2016 (Revised February 2023)
Teaching Note

Advertising Experiments at RestaurantGrades

By: Michael Luca, Weijia Dai and Hyunjin Kim

Advertising Experiments at RestaurantGrades is an exercise in which students are asked to analyze and make a recommendation on the basis of simulated experimental data. The setting is a hypothetical restaurant review company called RestaurantGrades (RG), which shows... View Details

Keywords: Advertising Campaigns; Marketing; Digital Marketing; Analysis; Performance Effectiveness

Purchase

March 2019
Article

When Does Advice Impact Startup Performance?

By: Aaron Chatterji, Solène Delecourt, Sharique Hasan and Rembrand Koning

Why do some entrepreneurs thrive while others fail? We explore whether the advice entrepreneurs receive about managing their employees influences their startup's performance. We conducted a randomized field experiment in India with 100 high-growth technology firms... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurial Management; Field Experiment; Peer Effects; Entrepreneurial Ecosystems; Advice; Management Style; Management Practices and Processes; Knowledge Dissemination; Entrepreneurship; Performance; India