Work in Progress
Incentives and Children's Dietary Choices (joint with Michele Belot (Oxford) & Patrick Nolen(Essex))
This is a large scale field experiment involving schools all across the UK. The goal of this project is to investigate whether providing temporary incentives could trigger long lasting changes in children's nutritional choices, specifically for boys and children from lower socio-economic status. We propose to investigate and compare the effectiveness of different rewarding schemes by conducting experiments in schools in the UK. The set of interventions we propose is inspired by recent findings in economics and psychology that have shown that providing short term incentives can have long lasting effects on behaviour, that is, by providing incentives temporarily, habits can be developed and sustained when the incentives are removed. We have recruited around 80 classes in 46 schools and the field work for this is currently on-going.
Selection into Policy Relevant Field Experiments (joint with Michele Belot (Oxford))
This study investigates systematically the issue of self-selection of field practitioners into participation and collaboration to a policy-relevant experiment. The experimental work consists in testing the effects of an intervention aimed at encouraging children to make more healthy choices atlunch. Children's diet and obesity are at the top of the policy agenda in the UK and political authorities request the choice of policies to be based on evidence-based interventions, that is, interventions that have been pre-piloted and found to be effective. We test the issue of self-selection in this type of pilot experimental work in a systematic manner. All local authorities in the UK were approached at the exact same time and in the same manner (via e-mail) and asked whether they would be interested in collaborating with us. We analyse the determinants of response, interest and participation to the experiment, such as the size of the local authority (number of schools), involvement in related policies, as well as area-specific health and socio-economic indicators.
The Cost of Binge Drinking (joint with Marco Francesconi (Essex))
Extreme Weather Events and Public Services (joint with Michele Belot (Oxford))