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- 2021
- Article
Don't Get It or Don't Spread It: Comparing Self-interested versus Prosocial Motivations for COVID-19 Prevention Behaviors
By: Jillian J. Jordan, Erez Yoeli and David Rand
COVID-19 prevention behaviors may be seen as self-interested or prosocial. Using American samples from MTurk and Prolific (total n = 6,850), we investigated which framing is more effective—and motivation is stronger—for fostering prevention behavior intentions. We...
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- 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....
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- September 2021
- Article
Gender Stereotypes in Deliberation and Team Decisions
By: Katherine B. Coffman, Clio Bryant Flikkema and Olga Shurchkov
We explore how groups deliberate and decide on ideas in an experiment with communication. We find that gender biases play a significant role in which group members are chosen to answer on behalf of the group. Conditional on the quality of their ideas, individuals are...
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- September 2021
- Article
Income More Reliably Predicts Frequent Than Intense Happiness
By: Jon M. Jachimowicz, Ruo Mo, Adam Eric Greenberg, Bertus Jeronimus and Ashley V. Whillans
There is widespread consensus that income and subjective well-being are linked, but when and why they are connected is subject to ongoing debate. We draw on prior research that distinguishes between the frequency and intensity of happiness to suggest that higher income...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Proxy Advisory Firms and Corporate Shareholder Engagement
By: Aiyesha Dey, Joshua White and Austin Starkweather
We examine the influence of proxy advisors on firms’ shareholder engagement behavior. Our analyses exploit a quasi-natural experiment using Say-On-Pay voting outcomes near a threshold that triggers a review of engagement activities by Institutional Shareholder Services...
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- June 2021
- Article
The Role of Beliefs in Driving Gender Discrimination
By: Katherine B. Coffman, Christine L. Exley and Muriel Niederle
While there is ample evidence of discrimination against women in the workplace, it can be difficult to understand what factors contribute to discriminatory behavior. We use an experiment to both document discrimination and unpack its sources. First, we show that, on...
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- Article
Does Observability Amplify Sensitivity to Moral Frames? Evaluating a Reputation-Based Account of Moral Preferences
By: Valerio Capraro, Jillian J. Jordan and Ben Tappin
A growing body of work suggests that people are sensitive to moral framing in economic games involving prosociality, suggesting that people hold moral preferences for doing the “right thing”. What gives rise to these preferences? Here, we evaluate the explanatory power...
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- May 2021
- Article
Preparing for a Pandemic: Accelerating Vaccine Availability
By: Amrita Ahuja, Susan Athey, Arthur Baker, Eric Budish, Juan Camilo Castillo, Rachel Glennerster, Scott Duke Kominers, Michael Kremer, Jean Lee, Canice Prendergast, Christopher M. Snyder, Alex Tabarrok, Brandon Joel Tan and Witold Wiecek
Vaccinating the world’s population quickly in a pandemic has enormous health and economic benefits. We analyze the problem faced by governments in determining the scale and structure of procurement for vaccines. We analyze alternative approaches to procurement, arguing...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Cognitive Biases: Mistakes or Missing Stakes?
By: Benjamin Enke, Uri Gneezy, Brian Hall, David Martin, Vadim Nelidov, Theo Offerman and Jeroen van de Ven
Despite decades of research on heuristics and biases, empirical evidence on the effect of large incentives—as present in relevant economic decisions—on cognitive biases is scant. This paper tests the effect of incentives on four widely documented biases: base rate...
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- March 2021 (Revised August 2021)
- Case
Nayana Mawilmada: Transforming Urban Development in Sri Lanka
By: Joshua D. Margolis and Mahima Rao-Kachroo
In February 2018, Nayana Mawilmada (Nayana), investment head for the Sri Lankan government’s ambitious $40 billion Megapolis project, must weigh an attractive job offer to move from the public sector to the private sector. A massive government project aimed at...
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Keywords:
Change Management;
Transformation;
Decision Making;
Public Sector;
Experience and Expertise;
Strategic Planning;
Work-Life Balance;
Transportation;
Risk and Uncertainty;
Power and Influence;
Personal Development and Career;
Real Estate Industry;
Rail Industry;
Transportation Industry;
South Asia;
Sri Lanka;
Boston;
Virginia;
United States
- March 2021
- Article
Opting-in to Prosocial Incentives
By: Daniel Schwartz, Elizabeth A. Keenan, Alex Imas and Ayelet Gneezy
The design of effective incentive schemes that are both successful in motivating employees and keeping down costs is of critical importance. Research has demonstrated that prosocial incentives, where individuals’ effort benefits a charitable organization, can sometimes...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Targeting High Ability Entrepreneurs Using Community Information: Mechanism Design in the Field
Identifying high-growth microentrepreneurs in low-income countries remains a challenge due to a scarcity of verifiable information. With a cash grant experiment in India we demonstrate that community knowledge can help target high-growth microentrepreneurs; while the...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Does Observability Amplify Sensitivity to Moral Frames? Evaluating a Reputation-Based Account of Moral Preferences
By: Valerio Capraro, Jillian J. Jordan and Ben Tappin
A growing body of work suggests that people are sensitive to moral framing in economic games involving prosociality, suggesting that people hold moral preferences for doing the “right thing”. What gives rise to these preferences? Here, we evaluate the explanatory power...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
The Market for Healthcare in Low Income Countries
By: Reshmaan Hussam, Abhijit Banerjee, Jishnu Das, Jeffrey Hammer and Aakash Mohpal
New research clearly identifies trust as an important driver of the demand for healthcare. However, doctors who realize that patients may not trust them may also alter their behavior in response. We assemble a large dataset that assesses clinical performance using...
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- November–December 2020
- Article
Getting Serious About Diversity: Enough Already with the Business Case
By: Robin Ely and David A. Thomas
Leaders may mean well when they tout the economic payoffs of hiring more women and people of color, but there is no research support for the notion that diversifying the workforce automatically improves a company’s performance. This article critiques the popular...
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- October 2020
- Article
Overcoming Resource Scarcity: Consumers' Response to Gifts Intending to Save Time and Money
By: Alice Lee-Yoon, Grant Donnelly and A.V. Whillans
Consumers feel increasingly pressed for time and money. Gifts have the potential to reduce scarcity in recipients’ lives, yet little is known about how recipients perceive gifts given with the intention of saving them time or money. Across four studies (N=1,403), we...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
Bankruptcy and the COVID-19 Crisis
By: Jialan Wang, Jeyul Yang, Benjamin Iverson and Ray Kluender
We examine the impact of the COVID-19 economic crisis on business and consumer bankruptcies in the United States using real-time data on the universe of filings. Historically, bankruptcies have closely tracked the business cycle and contemporaneous unemployment rates....
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- 2020
- Working Paper
(When) Does Appearance Matter? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial
By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna, Christos A. Makridis and Subhradip Sarker
While there is evidence about labor market discrimination based on race, religion, and gender, we know little about whether physical appearance leads to discrimination in labor market outcomes. We deploy a randomized experiment on 1,000 respondents in India between...
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- September 2020
- Article
Dignity, Inequality, and the Populist Backlash: Lessons from America and Europe for a Sustainable Globalization
By: Rawi Abdelal
The greatest challenge to the sustainability of our current era of globalization comes from within the United States. Most Americans have come to reject globalization. We must discern the lessons from the parts of the developed world where the backlash is also...
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