Publications

2008
Working Paper

Where Does It Go? Spending by the Financially Constrained

By: Shawn A. Cole, John Thompson and Peter Tufano

In this paper, we analyze the spending decisions of over 1.5 million Americans who vary in their degree of revealed credit constraints. Specifically, we analyze how these Americans spend their income tax refunds, using transaction-level data from a stored-value card... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Credit; Personal Finance; Spending; Taxation; Consumer Behavior; United States

22 Apr 2014
First Look

First Look: April 22

Publications August 2013 Modernizing Insurance Regulation Comparative Regulation of Market Intermediaries: Insights from the Indian Life Insurance Market By: Anagol, Santosh, Shawn A. View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

31 May 2011
First Look

First Look: May 31

PublicationsDo Voters Demand Responsive Governments? Evidence from Indian Disaster Relief Authors:Shawn Cole, Andrew Healy, and Eric Werker Publication:Journal of Development Economics (forthcoming)... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

24 Jul 2012
First Look

First Look: July 24

cross-national data for 32 countries, and controlling for per capita GDP, income inequality, and other factors. Countries that had higher rates of tipping behavior tended to have higher rates of corruption. We suggest that this surprising association may be accounted... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

29 Jan 2019
First Look

New Research and Ideas, January 29, 2019

Sustainability. Past Roads and Future Prospects By: Bergquist, Ann-Kristin, Shawn A. Cole, John Ehrenfeld, Andrew View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

11 Dec 2012
First Look

First Look: Dec. 11

Back, Moving Forward: A Review of Group and Team-Based Research, edited by Margaret A. Neale and Elizabeth A. Mannix, 359-381. Emerald Group Publishing, 2012 Abstract... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

10 Dec 2013
First Look

First Look: December 10

a comprehensive approach to understanding the drivers of firm location choices by modeling not only the impact of location and firm heterogeneity, but also the strategic interaction among firms. August 2013 Harvard Business Review How... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

24 Apr 2012
First Look

First Look: April 24

PublicationsBarriers to Household Risk Management: Evidence from India Authors:Shawn A. Cole, Xavier Giné, Jeremy Tobacman, Petia Topalova, Robert M. Townsend, and James Vickery Publication:American... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

August 2007
Article

Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India

By: A. Banerjee, Shawn A. Cole, E. Duflo and L. Linden

This paper presents the results of two randomized experiments conducted in schools in urban India. A remedial education program hired young women to teach students lagging behind in basic literacy and numeracy skills. It increased average test scores of all children in... View Details

Keywords: Literacy; Teaching; Performance Improvement; Competency and Skills; India

July 2014
Article

Smart Money? The Effect of Education on Financial Outcomes

By: Shawn A. Cole, Anna Paulson and Gauri Kartini Shastry

Household financial decisions are important for household welfare, economic growth and financial stability. Yet, our understanding of the determinants of financial decision-making is limited. Exploiting exogenous variation in state compulsory schooling laws in both... View Details

Keywords: Personal Finance; Investment; Decisions; Behavior; Financial Condition

10 May 2016
First Look

May 10, 2016

Agricultural Advice: Technology Adoption, Diffusion and Sustainability By: Cole, Shawn A., and A. Nilesh Fernando Abstract—We examine the role of management in agricultural... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

May 2022
Article

Can Gambling Increase Savings? Empirical Evidence on Prize-Linked Savings Accounts

By: Shawn A. Cole, Benjamin Iverson and Peter Tufano

This paper studies the adoption and impact of prize-linked savings (PLS) accounts, which offer lottery-like payouts to individual account holders in lieu of interest. Using microlevel data from a bank in South Africa, we show that PLS is attractive to a broad group of... View Details

Keywords: Household Finance; Banking; Savings; Prize-linked Savings; Lottery; Household; Personal Finance; Saving; Banks and Banking

Purchase

15 Oct 2008
First Look

First Look: October 15, 2008

improved ability of firms to replicate business innovations has changed the nature of business competition. Download the paper: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/07-016.pdf Do Voters Appreciate Responsive Governments? Evidence from Indian Disaster Relief Authors:Shawn... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

17 Jan 2012
First Look

First Look: January 17

Evidence from the Indian Life Insurance Market Authors:Santosh Anagol, Shawn Cole, and Shayak Sarkar Abstract We conduct a series of field experiments to evaluate two competing views of the role of financial... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

October 2021
Article

Changing Gambling Behavior through Experiential Learning

By: Shawn A. Cole, Martin Abel and Bilal Zia

This paper tests experiential learning as a debiasing tool to reduce gambling in South Africa, through a randomized field experiment. The study implements a simple, interactive game that simulates the odds of winning the national lottery through dice rolling.... View Details

Keywords: Debiasing; Experiential Learning; Behavioral Economics; Financial Education; Learning; Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Behavior; Decision Making