Evaluations

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test the impact of financial incentives on the take-up of energy-efficient smart meters and subsequent energy use in partnership with British Gas. While offering incentives increased smart meter adoption, customers did not reduce their energy...

Working with a microfinance institution in Ecuador, researchers investigated whether providing timely reminders to save via text message can help people save more.

Researchers evaluated the impact of a residential energy efficiency program on energy savings and carbon emissions in the United States. They found that energy savings equaled only about half of the upfront cost of the program, which were far less than projected.

Researchers used two experiments to identify whether the motive for giving in public can be primarily linked to a desire for prestige (the “image” effect) or a hope that a public gift will influence others (the “signal” effect). They found that a desire to improve social image largely explained why...

The collection of delinquent fines is a massive public administrative challenge. In the United Kingdom for instance, unpaid court fines amounted to more than £600 million in 2011. Managing noncompliant accounts and dispatching bailiffs to collect fines in person is costly. Researchers used a...

Taking advantage of a federal anticorruption program that randomly assigned municipalities to be audited, the researchers compared the electoral outcomes for mayors in two randomly selected groups of municipalities: those that were audited before and those that were audited after the 2004 election...