Essays in Behavioral and Experimental Economics

Abstract

This dissertation consists of essays in behavioral and experimental economics that address policy-relevant questions. The first chapter, coauthored with Elizabeth Bell, reports on a lab-in-the-field experiment among high-ranking policymakers in the U.S. government. We show that policymakers’ assessments of the value of hypothetical programs are inelastic with respect to the program’s impact, and we identify portable decision aids that increase responsiveness to impact. The second chapter, coauthored with Pedro Bessone, Gautam Rao, Frank Schilbach, and Heather Schofield, explores the impact of additional nighttime and daytime sleep in a poor, urban setting on a range of economic outcomes. We run a large-scale field experiment in Chennai, India and find that additional night-time sleep has no impact on cognition, productivity, decision-making, or well-being while the provision of a half-hour nap during the work day improves a range of outcomes. The third chapter, coauthored with Christine Exley, Raymond Fisman, and Judd Kessler, uses data from Boston University on students’ decisions to take a class for credit versus for a letter grade to investigate whether women and men differ in their propensity to conceal negative information about themselves. We identify a "transparency gap'' across genders: Women are 8.8 percentage points less likely to conceal poor performance in courses.