Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are the gold standard for evaluating the effects of interventions because they rely on simple assumptions. Their validity also depends on an implicit assumption: that the research process itself, including how participants are assigned, does not affect outcomes. In this paper, I challenge this assumption by showing that outcomes can depend on the subject's knowledge of the study, their treatment status, and the assignment mechanism. I design a field experiment in India around a soil testing program that exogenously varies how participants are informed of their assignment. Villages are randomized into two main arms: one where treatment status is determined by a public lottery, and another by a private computerized process. My design temporally separates assignment from treatment delivery, allowing me to isolate the causal effect of the assignment process itself. I find that estimated treatment effects differ across assignment methods and that these effects emerge even before the treatment is delivered. The effects are not uniform: the control group responds more strongly to the assignment method than the treated group. These findings suggest that the choice of assignment procedure is consequential and that failing to account for it can threaten the interpretation and generalizability of standard RCT treatment effect estimates.

We study how the saliency of past authoritarian regimes affects privacy concerns, leveraging Germany’s strong culture of Holocaust remembrance. We use detailed street-level data from Berlin to show the effect of Stolpersteine—individual memorials for victims of Nazi persecution—on privacy concerns, measured as blurring requests on Google Street View. To isolate causality, we leverage the quasi-random variation in Stolpersteine location after controlling for victim agglomeration patterns around each address. We show that Stolpersteine cause a localized increase in blurring, with the effect concentrating within 10 meters of a Stolperstein. We also find that Stolpersteine seen while commuting increase blurring. Furthermore, through an experimental survey we show that when Germans are primed to think about the Stolpersteine and Nazi persecution, they respond by spending more time on the experiment’s final consent form. This experimental design together with our blurring measure constitute two novel measures of privacy concerns.

[SSRN] [Extended Abstract at EC'24]

EC'24 Exemplary Empirics and Experiments Track Paper

2022 Sean Buckley Memorial Award for Best Second-Year Paper, Stanford University, Dept. of Economics

This project extends the investigation of awareness states in Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) by conducting a comprehensive meta-analysis of 5,107 RCTs reported in the AEA Registry. I systematically categorize the awareness states of participants through careful analysis of research protocols. Preliminary findings reveal significant variation in assignment methods: over 80% of studies use computerized randomization, 8% employ public lotteries, and the remainder utilize alternative approaches. However, the lack of detailed reporting on information provided to subjects about the randomization process poses challenges for precise categorization. The study aims to identify correlations between different awareness states and treatment effect magnitudes. Additionally, I examine whether stratification in randomization reduces subjects' awareness of the research assignment process. By leveraging this variation, I aim to assess how subjects' awareness of the assignment process influences treatment outcomes. This meta-analysis will provide valuable insights into the generalizability of the awareness state concept across diverse RCT contexts and its implications for experimental design and interpretation.

A growing economics literature emphasizes that aspirations are central to investment decisions and can perpetuate poverty traps when they are low. Recent studies show that targeted interventions, for example, exposure to role models, career counseling, or high expectations, can shift aspirations and educational outcomes. A central question remains underexplored: whose aspirations inside the household matter most for changing investments in education?  Most child-focused programs in India assume that mothers are the natural entry point for influencing children’s futures. This assumption is reflected institutionally, since education and child welfare fall under the Ministry of Women and Child Development. In practice, however, mothers often lack final decision-making authority and independent income to act on their preferences: Fathers control financial decisions about schooling and marriage. Interventions that target paternal aspirations, especially when paired with credible information on children’s performance, may therefore be more effective than approaches that focus on mothers or children alone. Our study tests this idea directly. We conduct a randomized experiment in rural districts of Karnataka to evaluate whether a low-cost informational intervention that makes children’s report cards salient and offers counseling and application support for government scholarships can shift fathers’ aspirations, increase educational investment, and improve school attendance. 

We investigate the role and impact of the county agricultural agents organized into the Cooperative Extension Service (CES) in the development of the Black rural population from its creation in 1904 to the Civil Rights Movement era. The project sheds light on the historical significance of Black county agents, their networks, their interaction with discriminatory practices, and their impact on migration and land loss. We digitized and created a new dataset of county agents by year and county they worked at, linking them not only to their socioeconomic characteristics but also to the population they worked with and to the state or federal agents they responded to. With this in hand, together with publicly available data on migration, discrimination, government spending, and agricultural development, we study the effects of the program on Black and white farmers, analyzing how discrimination and local control affected it. Moreover, we study whether Black county agents were able to slow down the Second Great Migration, allowing access to government programs designed during the New Deal era.