We present evidence on whether workers have social preferences by comparing workers’ productivityunder relative incentives, where individual effort imposes a negative externality on others,to their productivity under piece rates, where it does not. We find that the productivity of theaverage...

The ability to cooperate in collective action problems — such as those relating to the useof common property resources or the provision of local public goods — is a key determinant ofeconomic performance. In this paper we discuss two aspects of collective action problemsin developing...

Almost one third of the population in developing countries is under age 15. Hence improvingthe effectiveness of policy interventions that target adolescents might be especiallyimportant. We analyze the intention to participate in training programs of adolescent girlsin Uganda, a country with...

We discuss how the use of field experiments sheds light on long standing research questionsrelating to firm behavior. We present insights from two classes of experiments: within andacross firms, and draw common lessons from both sets. Field experiments within firmsgenerally aim to shed light on...

Many organizations rely on teamwork, and yet field evidence on the impacts of team-basedincentives remains scarce. Compared to individual incentives, team incentives can affectproductivity by changing both workers’ effort and team composition. We present evidencefrom a field experiment...

When asking for donations, charitable organizations often use suggestions concerning the amount of potential contributions. However, the evidence concerning the effects of such suggestions is scarce and inconsistent. Unlike the majority of existing studies concerned with small-money...

The world's poorest people lack capital and skills and toil for others in occupations that others shun. Using a large-scale and long-term randomized control trial in Bangladesh this paper demonstrates that sizable transfers of assets and skills enable the poorest women to shift out of...

We present evidence from a firm level experiment in which we engineered an exogenous change in managerial compensation from fixed wages to performance pay based on the average productivity of lower-tier workers. Theory suggests that managerial incentives affect both the mean and dispersion of...

We present evidence on the effect of social connections between workers and managers on productivity in the workplace. To evaluate whether the existence of social connections is beneficial to the firm's overall performance, we explore how the effects of social connections vary with the strength...

We present evidence on social incentives in the workplace, namely on whether workers' behavior is affected by the presence of those they are socially tied to, even in settings where there are no externalities among workers due to either the production technology or the compensation scheme in...