Papers - John A List

Alec Brandon, John A List, Robert D Metcalfe, Michael K Price, Florian Rundhammer

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

This study considers the response of household electricity consumption to social nudges during peak load events. Our investigation considers two social nudges. The first targets conservation during peak load events, while the second promotes aggregate conservation. Using data from a natural field experiment with 42,100 households, we find that both social nudges reduce peak load electricity consumption by 2 to 4% when implemented in isolation and by nearly 7% when implemented in combination. These findings suggest an important role for social nudges in the regulation of electricity markets and a limited role for crowd out effects.

Andreas Leibbrandt, John A List

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

Labor force composition and the allocation of talent remain of vital import to modern economies. For their part, governments and companies around the globe have implemented equal employment opportunity (EEO) regulations to influence labor market flows. Even though such regulations are pervasive, surprisingly little is known about their impacts. We use a natural field experiment conducted across 10 U.S. cities to investigate if EEO statements in job advertisements affect the first step in the employment process, application rates. Making use of data from nearly 2,500 job seekers, we find considerable policy effects, but in an unexpected direction: the presence of an EEO statement dampens rather than encourages racial minorities willingness to apply for jobs. Importantly, the effects are particularly pronounced for educated job seekers and in cities with white majority populations. Complementary survey evidence suggests the underlying mechanism at work is "tokenism", revealing that EEO statements backfire because racial minorities avoid environments in which they are perceived as regulatory, or symbolic, hires rather than being hired on their own merits. Beyond their practical and theoretical importance, our results highlight how field experiments can significantly improve policy making. In this case, if one goal of EEO regulations is to enhance the pool of minority applicants, then it is not working.

John A List

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

This review summarizes the historical place of the seminal contribution of Kahneman et al. (1990), from origins to theory to catalyst of an entire area of scholarship. This new literature has produced evidence both in concert with the original KKT conclusions as well as evidence refuting certain insights from KKT. The general theme of my summary is that even imperfect papers can have deep impact, both within and outside the academy; a lesson that today's critics should consider as young experimentalists continue to fight the tyranny of the top 5.

John A List

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

"Putting Economic Research into Practice at Businesses (to Inform Science and Major Social Challenges)" Slides from ASSA NABE

Omar Al-Ubaydli, John A List

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

This is a review of the literature of field experimental studies of markets. The main results covered by the review are as follows: (1) Generally speaking, markets organize the efficient exchange of commodities; (2) There are some behavioral anomalies that impede efficient exchange; (3) Many behavioral anomalies disappear when traders are experienced.

James Andreoni, Amalia Di Girolamo, John A List, Claire Mackevicius, Anya Samek

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

We conduct experiments eliciting risk preferences with over 1,400 children and adolescents aged 3-15 years old. We complement our data with an assessment of cognitive and executive function skills. First, we find that adolescent girls display significantly greater risk aversion than adolescent boys. This pattern is not observed among young children, suggesting that the risk gap in risk preferences emerges in early adolescence. Second, we find that at all ages in our study, cognitive skills (specifically math ability) are positively associated with risk taking. Executive functions among children, and soft skills among adolescents, are negatively associated with risk taking. Third, we find that greater risk-tolerance is associated with higher likelihood of disciplinary referrals, which provides evidence that our task is equipped to measure a relevant behavioral outcome. For academics, our research provides a deeper understanding of the developmental origins of risk preferences and highlights the important role of cognitive and executive function skills to better understand the association between risk preferences and cognitive abilities over the studied age range.

Bharat Chandar, Ali Hortacsu, John A List, Ian Muir, Jeffrey M Wooldridge

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

Field experiments conducted with the village, city, state, region, or even country as the unit of randomization are becoming commonplace in the social sciences. While convenient, subsequent data analysis may be complicated by the constraint on the number of clusters in treatment and control. Through a battery of Monte Carlo simulations, we examine best practices for estimating unit-level treatment effects in cluster-randomized field experiments, particularly in settings that generate short panel data. In most settings we consider, unit-level estimation with unit fixed effects and cluster-level estimation weighted by the number of units per cluster tend to be robust to potentially problematic features in the data while giving greater statistical power. Using insights from our analysis, we evaluate the effect of a unique field experiment: a nationwide tipping field experiment across markets on the Uber app. Beyond the import of showing how tipping affects aggregate outcomes, we provide several insights on aspects of generating and analyzing cluster-randomized experimental data when there are constraints on the number of experimental units in treatment and control.

Greg Allenby, Russell Belk, Catherine Eckel, Robert Fisher, Ernan Haruvy, John A List, Yu Ma, Peter Popkowski Leszczyc, Yu Wang, Sherry Xin Li

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

We offer a unified conceptual, behavioral, and econometric framework for optimal fundraising that deals with both synergies and discrepancies between approaches from economics, consumer behavior, and sociology. The purpose is to offer a framework that can bridge differences and open a dialogue between disciplines in order to facilitate optimal fundraising design. The literature is extensive, and our purpose is to offer a brief background and perspective on each of the approaches, provide an integrated framework leading to new insights, and discuss areas of future research.

Christopher Cotton, Brent R Hickman, John A List, Joseph Price, Sutanuka Roy

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

We conduct a field experiment across three diverse school districts to structurally identify student motivation and study productivity parameters in a model of adolescent human capital development. By observing study time, homework task completion, and test results, we can identify individual and demographic variations in motivation and study time effectiveness. Struggling students typically do not lack motivation but rather struggle to convert study time into completed assignments and proficiency improvements. The study also attending a higher-performing school is associated with both higher productivity and higher motivation relative to peers with similar observables in lower-performing schools. Counterfactual analyses estimates that school quality differences account for a substantial share of the racial differences in test scores, and considers the impact of alternative policies aimed at reducing racial performance gaps.

John A List

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

No abstract available

Snigdha Gupta, John A List, Lauren Supplee, Dana L Suskind

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

Failed to Scale: Embracing the Challenge of Scaling in Early Childhood

John A List

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

While empirical economics has made important strides over the past half century, there is a recent attack that threatens the foundations of the empirical approach in economics: external validity. Certain dogmatic arguments are not new, yet in some circles the generalizability question is beyond dispute, rendering empirical work as a passive enterprise based on frivolity. Such arguments serve to caution even the staunchest empirical advocates from even starting an empirical inquiry in a novel setting. In its simplest form, questions of external validity revolve around whether the results of the received study can be generalized to different people, situations, stimuli, and time periods. This study clarifies and places the external validity crisis into perspective by taking a unique glimpse into the grandest of trials: The External Validity Trial. A key outcome of the proceedings is an Author Onus Probandi, which outlines four key areas that every study should report to address external validity. Such an evaluative approach properly rewards empirical advances and justly recognizes inherent empirical limitations.

Eszter Czibor, David Jimenez-Gomez, John A List

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

What was once broadly viewed as an impossibility - learning from experimental data in economics - has now become commonplace. Governmental bodies, think tanks, and corporations around the world employ teams of experimental researchers to answer their most pressing questions. For their part, in the past two decades academics have begun to more actively partner with organizations to generate data via field experimentation. While this revolution in evidence-based approaches has served to deepen the economic science, recently a credibility crisis has caused even the most ardent experimental proponents to pause. This study takes a step back from the burgeoning experimental literature and introduces 12 actions that might help to alleviate this credibility crisis and raise experimental economics to an even higher level. In this way, we view our "12 action wish list" as discussion points to enrich the field.

Ori Heffetz, John A List

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

Carefully designed scientific experiments have been an engine of economic, technological, and social progress for well over a century, which is why the public generally trusts such methods. Unfortunately, governments around the world still routinely oppose controlled trials of public policies.

John A List

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

In the past several decades academics and policymakers have grappled with how to augment the traditional classroom approach to enhance critical thinking skill formation. In this not, I take a different approach. I begin by developing a Critical Thinking Hierarchy, where from the bottom of the hierarchy upwards two key skills evolve: developing/assimilating empirical evidence to update one's beliefs (connecting the dots with empiricism) and putting the puzzle pieces together with conceptual reasoning (connecting the dots with abstract thought). Skills lower down in the hierarchy must be achieved before individuals can gain skills higher up. A key aspect of the CT skill formation process revolves around student's maturation from "fast thinking" to "slow thinking". My overall approach is useful because it at once defines critical thinking, pinpoints where improvements must be made for development, and provides a classroom playbook to enhance critical thinking skill formation.

Greta List, John A List, Lina Ramirez, Anya Samek

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

We conduct experiments with 720 children ages 9-11 to evaluate the relationship of time and risk preferences with health. Children who are more patient report consuming fewer unhealthy calories and spending less time on sedentary activities such as video games. Children who are more risk seeking report engaging in more exercise and more screen time. However, time and risk preferences are not predictive of body mass index (BMI). Moreover, some of the negative health behaviors, such as screen time, are associated with lower - rather than higher - BMI.

Matilde Giaccherini, David H Herberich, David Jimenez-Gomez, John A List, Giovanni Ponti, Michael K Price

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

This paper uses a field experiment to estimate the effects of prices and social norms on the decision to adopt and efficient technology. We find that prices and social norms influence the adoption and decision along different margins: while prices operate on both the extensive and intensive margins, social norms operate mostly through the extensive margin. This has both positive and normative implications, and suggests that economics and psychology may be strong complements in the diffusion process. To complement the reduced form results, we estimate a structural model that points to important household heterogeneity: whereas some consumers welcome the opportunity to purchase and learn about the new technology, for others the inconvenience and social pressure of the ask results in negative welfare. As a whole, our findings highlight that the design of optimal technological diffusion policies will require multiple instruments and a recognition of household heterogeneity.

Daniel Hedblom, Brent R Hickman, John A List

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

We develop theory and a tightly-linked field experiment to explore the supply side implications of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Our natural field experiment, in which we created our own firm and hired actual workers, generates a rich data set on worker behavior and responses to both pecuniary and CSR incentives. Making use of a novel identification framework, we use these data to estimate a structural principal-agent model. This approach permits us to compare and contrast treatment and selection effects of both CSR and financial incentives. Using data from more than 110 job seekers, we find strong evidence that when a firm advertises work as socially-oriented, it attracts employees who are more productive, produce higher quality work, and have more highly valued leisure time. In terms of enhancing the labor pool, for example, CSR increases the number of applicants by 25 percent, an impact comparable to the effect of a 36 percent increase in wages. We also find an economically important complementarity between CSR and wage offers, highlighting the import of using both to hire and motivate workers. Beyond lending insights into the supply side of CSR, our research design serves as a framework for causal inference on other forms of non-pecuniary incentives and amenities in the workplace, or any other domain more generally.

John A List, Zacharias Maniadis, Fabio Tufano

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

The sciences are in an era o fan alleged "credibility crisis'. In this study, we discuss the reproducibility of empirical results, focusing on economics research. By combining theory and empirical evidence, we discuss the import of replication studies, and whether they improve our confidence in novel findings. The theory sheds light on the importance of replications, even when replications are subject to bias. We then present a pilot meta-study of replication in experimental economics, a subfield serving as a positive benchmark for investigating the credibility of economics. Our meta-study highlights certain difficulties when applying meta-research (Ioannidis et al., 2015) and systematizing the economics literature.

John A List

Cited by*: None Downloads*: None

In 2019, I put together a summary of data from my field experiments website that pertained to natural field experiments. Several people have asked me if I have an update. In this document I update all figures and numbers to show the details for 2022. I also include the description from the 2019 paper below.